On the development of a monitoring scheme of buffalo welfare at farm level

Abstract

In the present review some animal-related indicators, possibly relevant for a monitoring scheme of buffalo cow welfareat the farm level, are suggested. The indicators are discussed on the basis of their validity (meaningful with respect toanimal welfare), reliability (reflecting the tendency to give the same results on repeated measurements) and feasibility(concerning time and money consume). The attention was focused on the following indicators: excessive thinning or fatteningassessed with Body Condition Score (BCS) systems; cleanliness; lameness; resting, social, oral abnormalbehaviours; injuries; stockmanship; animal-human relationship; positive indicators (diversity of lying postures,allogrooming, etc.). We have concluded that some of the indicators validated for cattle could be conveniently applied tobuffaloes without changes (e.g. injuries and avoidance distance), while others should be appropriately adjusted to thisspecies (e.g. BCS, cleanliness, housing factors). In addition, further studies are needed either to find reliable and feasibleregistration methods for some indicators (e.g. aggressive and resting behaviours) or to identify additional parametersspecific for buffaloes (e.g. prevalence of buffalo cows injected with oxytocin during milking as an indicator of thequality of human-animal relationship).

Keywords

• Buffalo, Welfare, Monitoring system