Positive Affective States in Pigs and Dairy Cattle: Assessment and Impact on Resilience

The livestock sector is currently under increasing societal pressure to enhance animal welfare. Affective states, i.e., moods and emotions, are a key aspect of welfare. Therefore, in order to improve the welfare of livestock species, it is crucial not only to minimize the animals' negative affective states, but also to promote positive ones. However, our knowledge of how to assess affective states in pigs and dairy cattle is far from complete.

Another benefit of promoting positive affective states is that they can improve resilience, which is an individual's capacity to quickly return to its initial health, affective, and cognitive state, after a challenge. In other words, an animal raised under conditions of good welfare can cope better with a stressful event. This could contribute to a more efficient and sustainable livestock sector, because resilient animals would need, for example, fewer antibiotics to battle health problems.

To address these issues, this project will first investigate several promising indicators of positive affective states in pigs and dairy cattle, including play behaviour and oxytocin levels in the saliva. It will then explore the association between positive affective states and resilience to common challenges these species face, such as short-term isolation and heat stress. Ultimately, the goal is to answer lingering questions about positive animal welfare and its putative association with resilience, with the hope of contributing to more ethical and sustainable pig and dairy production.