WelFur-mink: inter-observer reliability of on-farm welfare assessment in the growth season

TY - GEN

T1 - WelFur-mink: inter-observer reliability of on-farm welfare assessment in the growth season

AU - Møller, Steen Henrik

AU - Rousing, Tine

AU - Hansen, Steffen W

PY - 2012

Y1 - 2012

N2 - A welfare assessment system should be "high" in validity, robustness and feasibility - the latter both as regards time and costs. Therefore, observers must be able to perform the on-farm assessment with acceptable validity after some training. Based on empiric data this paper evaluates the consequences of operating with several observers. Animal based measures on 9 Danish mink farms were taken in November 2011. Eight observers individually, but in paris on herd level, carried out data collection on the measures involving subjective grading, e.g. mink "activity", "injuries" and "fur-chewing" on approximately 120 cages with mink per farm. The assessment of the two observers gave similar frequencies of welfare problems and thus similar welfare assessments. The individual problems observed were however, not the same leading to poor or fair, but rarely good inter observer reliability. Despite the skilled assessors, the short training was not sufficient to get highly reliable results. No overall difference was found between the inter observer reliability of cages with ≤2 or ≥3 mink in a cage. More training and better training material and, for some measures, observation procedures are needed in order to increase reliability of the difficult subjective measures.

AB - A welfare assessment system should be "high" in validity, robustness and feasibility - the latter both as regards time and costs. Therefore, observers must be able to perform the on-farm assessment with acceptable validity after some training. Based on empiric data this paper evaluates the consequences of operating with several observers. Animal based measures on 9 Danish mink farms were taken in November 2011. Eight observers individually, but in paris on herd level, carried out data collection on the measures involving subjective grading, e.g. mink "activity", "injuries" and "fur-chewing" on approximately 120 cages with mink per farm. The assessment of the two observers gave similar frequencies of welfare problems and thus similar welfare assessments. The individual problems observed were however, not the same leading to poor or fair, but rarely good inter observer reliability. Despite the skilled assessors, the short training was not sufficient to get highly reliable results. No overall difference was found between the inter observer reliability of cages with ≤2 or ≥3 mink in a cage. More training and better training material and, for some measures, observation procedures are needed in order to increase reliability of the difficult subjective measures.

KW - Neovison vison

KW - Kappa

KW - index of concordance

KW - welfare

M3 - Article in proceedings

SN - 978-90-8686-205-4

VL - 36

SP - 469

EP - 476

BT - Proceedings of the Xth International Scientific Congress in fur animal production

A2 - Larsen, P.F.

A2 - Møller, S.H.

A2 - Clausen, T.

A2 - Hammer, A.S.

A2 - Lássen, T.M.

A2 - Nielsen, V.H.

A2 - Tauson, A.H.

A2 - Jeppesen, L.L.

A2 - Hansen, S.W.

A2 - Elnif, J.

A2 - Malmkvist, J.

PB - Wageningen Academic Publishers

T2 - IFASA congress

Y2 - 21 August 2012 through 24 August 2012

ER -