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The use of demand functions to assess behavioural priorities in farm animals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2023

MB Jensen ,
LJ Pedersen  and
J Ladewig
MB Jensen*
Affiliation:
Department of Animal Health and Welfare, Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Research Centre Foulum, PO Box SO, 8830 Tjele, Denmark
LJ Pedersen
Affiliation:
Department of Animal Health and Welfare, Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Research Centre Foulum, PO Box SO, 8830 Tjele, Denmark
J Ladewig
Affiliation:
Department of Animal Health and Welfare, Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Research Centre Foulum, PO Box SO, 8830 Tjele, Denmark
*
* Contact for correspondence and requests for reprints: [email protected]
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Abstract

The use of demand functions to identify the behaviours most important to animals has been advocated widely. The principle is to place increasing cost on the opportunity to perform several behaviours and subsequently to rank these behaviours according to the change in their performance as a function of cost; this change is described by the elasticity of the demand function. However, the method has been criticised for placing the animal in too artificial a setting. Firstly, the animal works repeatedly for short periods of access to a resource, which may interrupt bouts of behaviour; secondly, animals are tested in isolation, which may affect their motivation to perform the target behaviour; and, finally, assumptions regarding the effect of prior deprivation and reward duration on elasticity of demand need to be tested. This criticism, however, is important only if these factors do affect the elasticity of the resulting demand function. This paper reviews experiments that have developed methods to assess the importance of various behaviours to farm animals and that have tested the effect of social context, length of deprivation of a resource and reward duration. It is concluded that the elasticity of demand function may be used to assess the relative importance of various behaviours, but that it is important to make sure that the experimental set-up yields valid estimates of the elasticity of demand.

Keywords

animal welfarebehavioural prioritiescattledemand functionsmotivationpig
Type
Research Article
Information
Animal Welfare , Volume 13 , Issue S1: Science in the Service of Animal Welfare: Proceedings of the UFAW International Symposium, Edinburgh, 2-4 April 2003 , February 2004 , pp. S27 - S32
Copyright
© 2004 Universities Federation for Animal Welfare

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