Indicadores de bem-estar animal em caprinos sob duas abordagens analíticas

Abstract

Animal welfare of 80 goats was evaluated through social behavior, ambience and through the AWIN protocol. Of these, 14 goats were randomly selected to evaluate ingestive behavior. Assessments of social and ingestive behavior occurred at 10-minute intervals, weekly, lasting 12 hours, for 60 days. The microclimatic data were collected simultaneously at the evaluation of the animals, at intervals of two hours. After measuring the variables related to the environment, to ingestive and social behaviors, the data were compiled in a database, from which four Type Behaviors were obtained by means of an Ascending Hierarchical Classification (CHA) of the values of the Principal Components (CP) that explained 53.67% of the observed variance. To evaluate the AWIN protocol, Person Correlation was performed between the first and second level variables (p <0.01 and p <0.05). Each type behavior obtained reflected the grouping of the behavioral patterns taking into account the ingestive behavior, social and its variation according to the ambience. The internal consistency of the types was guaranteed by the difference (3.17, p <0.01) between the eigenvalues of the first two CP. It was observed that the type-1 behavior concentrated the moments of better ambience, types 2 and 3 concentrated the moments of worse ambience, type 3 also concentrated the agonistic interactions as a function of the radiation. In type 4, the social interactions observed as a whole occurred, this type being intermediate in relation to the ambience between types 1 and 2. A correlation was found between the AWIN variables analyzed. It was concluded that the bad ambience most of the time, as well as the low availability of forage, altered both the ingestive behavior and the social behavior of the goats. It was also concluded that the AWIN tool was efficient in evaluating animal welfare, although it did not evaluate deeply the effects of the ambience, especially in tropical climates. As a consequence animal welfare was considered poor in the present study.