JMICAWE India Travels - Bhannergatta Bear Rehabilitation Centre

Bhannergatta Bear Rehabilitation Centre

During their visit to Bangalore, JMICAWE director, Cathy Dwyer and Kirstin McIlvaney (MSc Programme Coordinator for Applied Animal Behaviour and Welfare, University of Edinburgh) were guests of Wildlife SOS and visited the Bhannergatta Bear Rehabilitation Centre. The Centre is one of two facilities that Wildlife SOS have developed to provide homes for ex-dancing bears now that this practice has been banned in India. Working with the communities that used to make their living from dancing bears Wildlife SOS has been able to provide sustainable improvements and other job opportunities for the villagers. 

The Centre now houses 75 Asian sloth bears, mostly those rehabilitated from villages but also a number of wild bears which have been brought in with injuries after conflicts with humans. Dancing bears were often taken from the wild when very young, and before they had learned to be bears from their mothers, so these animals can have many complex behavioural and health issues. The Centre provide a very comprehensive health care programme for the bears, and Cathy and Kirstin were particularly impressed with the work done to provide enrichment and training to provide positive animal welfare for these bears that had such a difficult start in life. 

The bears are trained with positive reinforcement (dates and honey in particular!) to cooperate with health assessments, and to approach the veterinarians to allow their teeth, paws and other bodily parts to be easily checked. Bears are also encouraged to explore, to climb and to range about their large forest enclosures so that they are able to express as much natural behaviour as possible. Overall it was a fantastic opportunity to see how lives can be improved for animals, even those that have had really difficult encounters with people, by an holistic approach to changing human behaviour and valuing the lives of animals.

JMICAWE India travels - Animal Welfare Workshop in Bangalore

Workshop on animal behaviour and welfare in Bangalore

JMICAWE Director, Cathy Dwyer, and the coordinator of the MSc programme in Applied Animal Behaviour and Welfare (University of Edinburgh), Kirstin McIlvaney, have just returned from a trip to the Veterinary College in Bangalore (Karnataka Veterinary, Animal and Fisheries Science University) where they ran a 3 day workshop on animal welfare and behaviour hosted by Dr Abdul Rahman and the Commonwealth Veterinary Association.

This was part of the work that JMICAWE are doing to capacity-build in Indian vet schools, and to support the new Animal Welfare Research Centre based in the vet school in Bangalore.  The workshop was attended by about 40 postgraduate students and faculty from 9 different vet schools across India. Cathy and Kirstin focused on animal welfare sciences, and particularly animal behaviour measurements. 

After a day in the classroom the workshop went out to visit the poultry and dairy facilities on site to practice their animal behaviour data collection skills. Half the group went with Kirstin to the poultry facility, where they compared the benefits of scan and focal sampling and discussed how they might use different techniques to address different issues. The other half of the group went with Cathy to the dairy unit where we looked at the importance of good ethograms, and piloting data collection methods, and had an attempt at conducting an on farm novel object test, based on previous methods used in the UK. We ended the workshop with discussion of teaching approaches to animal welfare, and exploring different teaching resources that were available.

Some of these resources are freely available and can be found on line at JMICAWE by following this link: https://www.ed.ac.uk/vet/jeanne-marchig-centre/cpd   

Virtual Animal Welfare Discussion between Edinburgh and 8 Asian Country representatives

 

 

 

This week, JMICAWE Director, Prof Nat Waran, took part in a live online discussion with animal welfare lecturers working in various parts of Asia, who were attending a workshop hosted by the World Animal Protection.

The 4 day annual workshop held in Bangkok, brought together key drivers for animal welfare education, from veterinary schools in a range of countries, including; Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, China and Taiwan. Using Skype, Prof Nat was able to pose a question related to the importance of using good evidence for underpinning effective animal welfare policy and legislation, and to consider how effective this would be for tackling an animal welfare concern relevant to the key driver's own country. The key drivers raised some interesting points, such as: the difficulties with separating ethical concerns from evidence based arguments and how public opinion led legislation may not always be best for animal welfare; the problem with having legislation that cannot be enforced and the concern that evidence from studies in other parts of the world addressing the needs of a species, is often disregarded in favour of more research being needed 'in country'. All issues that are relevant to others working towards changes to benefit animals.

Prof Nat Waran said 'It was really good to be able to interact with colleagues from different parts of the world to share ideas, knowledge and concerns, and to work towards an improved understanding of how we can mainstream animal welfare for education as well as for underpinning sound policy and practice'. With the use of modern technology, we can look forward to many more of these sorts productive interactions with colleagues all over the world'.

 

 

Send a Veterinary Nurse to India Project gets underway

The nursing of patients whilst they are sick or recuperating in hospital is of huge importance for ensuring all their needs are met and that their welfare doesn’t suffer. Nursing doesn’t just involve giving medication, changing dirty bedding and providing food for an animal, it is also about ensuring the patient is treated as an individual and given everything it needs, not just for its physical wellbeing but also its mental wellbeing. Taking the time to comfort and befriend a frightened animal, or simply groom or play with a long term inpatient is just as important as keeping its intravenous fluids running or administering antibiotics.

 

Sadly, in many countries, the nursing of animals is low down on the hospital’s priorities and many animals are left unintentionally neglected. Little time is spent observing the animal and therefore changes in behaviour, which could indicate pain or fear, go unnoticed. The opportunity to toilet out of the kennel area is often not given, tipped over water bowls go unreplenished, uneaten food may be summed up as in appetence rather than a preference for something else, soiled bedding (if provided) remains unchanged and behavioural needs, such as hiding, are overlooked. The animal becomes nothing more than a ‘tick list’ of duties rather than an individual character with preferences and personal needs.

In November this year JMICAWE’s Hayley Walters and Heather Bacon will be taking 8 student veterinary nurses from Edinburgh Napier University to 2 vet schools in Kerala in India to promote the value and importance of veterinary nursing. Over the course of 2 weeks the student veterinary nurses will help to demonstrate how good nursing improves patient care which in turn speeds up recovery times due to the provision of a comfortable environment, good nutrition, appropriate pain relief and lots of TLC.

The ‘India expedition team’ met up last month for a team building day at The Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, which involved a tour of the small animal hospital, presentations from Hayley, Heather and the student nurses, an interactive problem solving session and appropriately finished with a meal in an Indian restaurant in Edinburgh.

The long term plan for this project is to not only improve patient welfare through the caring profession but to eventually develop a veterinary nursing curriculum and qualification at the 2 vet schools in Kerala; something which will be of great value to the vets, veterinary students and, most importantly, the animals, when it happens.