Year: 2011
Roi Mandel
PhD student, Koret School of Veterinary Medicine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
A series of very constructive meetings with staff at the Koret School of Veterinary Medicine of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, led to the establishment of a SAWI funded PhD Research Scholarship in animal welfare science at the Vet School at Rehovot.
In September 2011, a SAWI research scholarship was given to Roi Mandel to fund his PhD work on “Exploring the role of monitoring ‘low-resilience’ behaviours in the early detection of stress and morbidity in dairy cows”. This work, now completed, supports the inclusion of grooming brush use, and possibly other low-resilience behaviours, into automated health monitoring systems, to better detect disease progression and recovery.
The output of Roi’s work is summarised in the following papers:
Mandel, R., Wenker, M.L., van Reenen, K., Keil, N. and Hillmann, E. 2019. Can access to an automated grooming brush and/or a mirror reduce stress of dairy cows kept in social isolation? Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 211: 1-8.
Mandel, R., Harazy, H., Gygax, L., Nicol, C.J., Ben-David, A., Whay, H.R., Klement, E. 2018. Detection of lameness in dairy cows using a grooming device. Journal of Dairy Science, 101: 1511-1517.
Mandel, R., Nicol, C.J. 2017. Re-direction of maternal behaviour in dairy cows. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 195: 24-31.
Mandel, R., Nicol, C.J., Whay, H.R., Klement, E. 2017. Detection and monitoring of metritis in dairy cows using an automated grooming device. Journal of Dairy Science, 100:5724-5728.
Mandel, R., Whay, H.R., Klement, E., Nicol, C.J. 2016. Invited review: Environmental enrichment of dairy cows and calves in indoor housing. Journal of Dairy Science, 99, 1695-1715.
Mandel, R., Whay, H.R, Nicol, C.J., Klement, E. 2013. The effect of food location, heat load and intrusive medical procedures on dairy cows’ brushing activity. 2013. Journal of Dairy Science, 96: 6506–6513.
Roi is now pursuing a postdoc position at the Department of Biology of the University of Copenhagen while continuing to lead and teach the Animal Welfare courses at the Koret Veterinary School, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Roi teaches both first year veterinary students and veterinarians who are pursuing a master’s degree in Public Health. An interesting novel approach in Roi’s teaching agenda, which others might want to explore, involves channelling animal welfare information to the general public using short YouTube videos created by the students themselves: https://www.youtube.com/user/ParadigmaProject/.