BVM&S Students - enjoy the Animal Welfare Final Year Elective

This year, the R(D)SVS offered their BVM&S students a new final year elective - in Applied Animal Behaviour and Welfare.

This new elective was designed to further the student's knowledge and understanding of domestic and captive wild animal's welfare and to provide some practical experience relating to the management of problem/abnormal animal behaviour in domestic and captive settings, including clinical animal behaviour counselling.

Throughout the two week period, the students went on numerous field trips including Edinburgh Zoo and a Pig Farm Unit.

During the latter the group discussed with Dr Susan Jarvis:

a)    The dominance and hunger in sows and did a feed competition test to assess dominance.

b)    Mutilations, genetic selection, housing etc.

Students were also able to:

a)    See sucklings in the farrowing house and time the let-down etc.

b)    Look at grower behaviour and write down some behaviours and definitions - play, aggression, rooting, resting, mounting etc.

Here is a picture of one of the final year students recording grower behaviour:

Feedback from the students has been very positive - Student KY said: “Thanks for the past 2 weeks, I really did enjoy it a lot. Everything that we did was extremely thought provoking/inspiring . I feel very honoured and fortunate to be one of the first people to have done this rotation, and certainly appreciate the effort and time that all the teachers have put into it. Thanks again and hope the students next year will enjoy it as much as we did.”