Animal welfare in stables is increasingly a priority in livestock facilities. Years ago, it wasn’t given the importance it is today, and now stables are being equipped with more resources and technology to maximize the facility’s performance.
For an animal to produce its best performance, usually milk production or fattening for meat sale, they must live in the best conditions and with the maximum possible and reasonable comfort.
Animal welfare has different influential factors, such as climate, space to move, the facilities in which the livestock are housed, the bedding or resting place, the relationship with other animals, nutrition, and even the medicine provided if they are sick.
By analyzing animal behavior and the quality and quantity of milk or fattening, as well as by sensing certain behaviors or physiological traits of each animal, studies and various checks on the animals’ comfort level can be established.
There is various documentation on such studies, such as “Behavior of Holstein cows kept in a free-stall system, in winter, in arid zone, Mexico” published by Vitela, I., among other authors in 2005. In that study, the behavior of dairy cows was evaluated, concluding that cows spend a considerable part of their time solely scratching themselves, being one of the five most common interactions they have with each other. In these facilities, they scratched against each other, or against the walls and pillars of the barns.
But it is not just this livestock that spends time scratching, as analyzed in the study by Fernández Beltrán, “Hypersensitivity to insect bites in horses” published by the University of Zaragoza, horses frequently present various clinical conditions associated with one or more types of hypersensitivity. The most common of these is caused by insect bites or stings, triggering a disease that consists of the alteration of the animals’ immunological balance, and is caused by allergenic components contained in the salivary gland of these insects. Thus, animals tend to spend much more time scratching if they have problems with insect bites.
Observing animal behavior in nature, they tend to constantly scratch against the bark of tree trunks. The problem that stabled animals and many fenced animals have is the absence of trees and elements to scratch against, leading them to only scratch against each other for comfort.
For this, Sacema offers an animal comfort totem, a cylindrical brush on a pillar that rests on the ground, made of fairly hard filaments, seeking the maximum comfort and resistance of the animals. In addition to the vertical totem, there are plate-shaped brushes that can be installed on the pillars of the barns or their beams for the livestock to scratch their backs.
Owners and caretakers of stabled livestock have noted an improvement in animal comfort by introducing these scratching brushes, which leads to a slight increase in facility performance and a reduction in animal stress.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fernández Beltrán, M., Fernández Casasnovas, A., & Marteles Aragüés, D. Hypersensitivity to insect bites in horses: a survey study of owners. University of Zaragoza, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, 2016. Department of Animal Pathology, Area of Animal Medicine and Surgery.
Vitela, I., Cruz-Vázquez, C., & Solano, J. (2005). Behaviour of Holstein cows kept in a free stall system, in winter, in an arid zone, Mexico. Archives of Veterinary Medicine, 37(1), 23-27.
