Fur biting: a useful tool to assess animal welfare on deer farms

    A typical agonistic deer interaction, such as fur biting, could be used as an indicator of social or environmental stress in deer farm management with the aim of detecting situations in which animal welfare may be compromised.


    In animal species that live in social groups, such as the red deer (Cervus elaphus), the fighting/aggression behaviors among the members of a group are very important to establish a social rank that orders the access to limited resources, such as food, space, or females during heat. This type of aggressive interactions, which define the dominant or subordinate role between the members of a group, are called agonistic interactions, and their occurrence patterns can be affected by various stressors..

    A study led by Dr. Javier Pérez-Barbería, from the Research Group in Animal Science Applied to Hunting Management of the Instituto de Investigación en Recursos Cinegéticos (IREC – CSIC, UCLM, JCCM), has analyzed the number of fur bites produced by interactions between individuals of the same group during 14 years as an index of agonistic interactions.

    Fur biting is one of the typical agonistic behaviors of the deer

    The results have shown that the number of bites was related to the rango social status of each animal, sex, group size and heat stress. Thus, they revealed that (1) the higher the social rank, the fewer bites an animal received; (2) increased heat stress caused increased biting; (3) males received more bites than females; (4) the heavier the animal, the fewer the number of bites on its body; (5) the larger the group, the more bites in the fur of the animals; (6) deer 5–6 years of age had more bites than younger or older deer; and (7) hinds that calved earlier in the calving season suffered fewer bites than those that calved at the peak of the calving season.

    This work and its results as a whole show that analyzing deer fur bites can be a useful tool. to detect situations in animal management that may be compromising the welfare of animals.

     

    Social interaction showing the dominance of a doe of Iberian origin (Cervus elaphus) over another. The study has been carried out in the experimental deer farm of the UCLM located in Albacete.

    Dr. Pérez-Barbería points out that “examining the amount of fur bitten by deer from the same group is a practical index to assess animal welfare and detect stress situations in farm conditions. However, its usefulness in wild deer populations, where space and animal density are not critical factors, is very limited, because in these conditions this behavior is not frequent”.

    Regarding the usefulness of the study in farms and zoos, Dr. Andrés García indicates that “Although the evaluation seems to be complicated, a trained veterinarian or manager can evaluate a very detailed scale of the bitten surface with the naked eye, as it has been in my case during these years of managing the UCLM deer herd. Such an expert would be able to spot management problems on the farms he visits".

    Finally, Dr. Tomás Landete points out a possible automation of the process: “currently there are image analysis systems in animal production that can estimate parameters from condition to even body weight or lameness. These companies could develop a similar system that calculates a rate of bites received and produces alarms for stress situations. In addition to the one million deer on farms in New Zealand, the almost half a million in the US or the 300.000 in all of Europe, the 650.000 deer in preserves in Spain could also benefit if an image analysis system were installed near where they are offered food".

    The scientific publication of this research is available at: