CU institute addresses farm, wild and laboratory animal concerns

By Roger Segelken

The Cornell Institute for Animal Welfare has been established to foster discussion and research on issues concerning animals in agriculture, laboratories and the wild.

Based in the College of Veterinary Medicine, the institute will provide financial support for studies by Cornell-affiliated researchers and will bring to campus speakers on a range of animal-welfare topics.

"Cornell has a long history of improving standard agricultural practices in behalf of farm animals, as well as enrichment studies for cats, dogs and monkeys in laboratory situations. We'd now like to extend those efforts for other species," said Fred Quimby, V.M.D., director of the Center for Research Animal Resources (CRAR) at Cornell. He said that more than 25 faculty members in three colleges at Cornell (Agriculture and Life Sciences, Veterinary Medicine and Arts and Sciences) have expressed interest in participating in institute research and that an institute director soon will be named. The first research grants will be issued this fall.

Start-up funding for the institute comes from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the Bernice Barbour Foundation. This is one of the first university-based programs in the United States to provide grants for animal-welfare research.

"These will be small grants, at least at first, but it's possible to make a little money go a long way with the right kind of planning," Quimby said. "We will encourage investigators to join experiments that are already under way and ask animal-welfare questions in that context," he said, pointing to a birth-control study with white-tailed deer. Cornell scientists are evaluating two types of anti-fertility drugs on a large, enclosed deer population at the nearby Seneca Army Depot -- as a suitable alternative to reducing populations by controlled hunting. A researcher with a third type of birth control could readily join that study for little more than the cost of materials, the CRAR director said.

"It's often possible to design experiments so that the animal can make a choice and tell us something important about what it prefers," Quimby said, reporting results of previous and ongoing studies of the type to be funded by the new institute:

• Dairy cattle in studies of barn "comfort areas" for cows were given a choice of bedding materials and voted with their hooves, so to speak, by getting off them and resting on the material they preferred. Sometimes animals surprise humans, however. In a classic Cornell study of poultry preferences, chickens were given the choice of flooring materials (wooden slats or wire mesh). The chickens chose to walk on wire mesh, apparently because wire offers more points of support for their feet.

• Laboratory rabbits were traditionally housed one to a cage because researchers believed the animals would fight. In fact, wild cottontail rabbits will fight others in the same cage, but rabbits that are bred for research are not cottontails. Cornell researchers tried housing litter mates together, and the sociable animals now appreciate the chance for companionship.

• When baboons in medical research appeared to be bored in their cages, Cornell researchers designed an enclosed primate playpen. Now baboons can get their exercise and lab workers can "break down" the playpen into modules that fit in cage-washer machines. Lab primates also were shown to prefer a challenge at mealtime. They would rather search for edible seeds that animal attendants have hidden in pieces of wool fleece, compared with receiving the same food in bowls. The extra effort to find their food is reducing some stereotypical behavior of captive animals, such as cage pacing.

• Pregnant sows, once held throughout gestation in individual pens, are now maintained in group pens. Special feeding stations allow each animal to enter and eat undisturbed by the others. Farm managers can now set ideal individualized feeding programs for each sow with the assistance of computer monitoring. In addition, boars now enjoy safe socialization with their neighbors since solid-wall wood pens have been replaced with airy open pen dividers.

• Hoping to enrich the lives of laboratory baboons, a Cornell student researcher gave the primates their choice of videotapes, including natural history documentaries featuring other primates. The baboons indicated their displeasure with primate television by shrieking in fear and hiding their eyes. However, they love television cartoons and sometimes choose to watch the same cartoon over and over.