2011 Exploring the role of monitoring ‘low-resilience’ behaviours in the early detection of stress and morbidity in dairy cows
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/.
2005 Conference on animals in society
The SAWI Fund supported a conference held in July 2005 at Tel Aviv University on ‘Animals in Society: Status, Perspectives and Awareness’ which addressed many animal welfare issues including improvement of the welfare of animals in agriculture and industry, the health and welfare of pets, and how to promote positive attitudes to animals. This conference, organised by Professor Joseph Terkel and his staff, was attended by over 600 participants.
1999 Humane killing of chicks
In October 1999, SAWI made an award of £4,750 (with a further £4750 being given by Science for Animal Welfare’s sister charity, the Humane Slaughter Association, with whom premises and staff are shared) to Mr Avraham Pinkas of Hai-Meshek to support the development and building of electrical facilities for the humane killing of day-old chicks. Before this technology was developed, very large numbers of day-old chicks were not killed humanely (male hatchlings are an unwanted byproduct of the laying hen production industry).