Effects of blindfold and tail bend of Egyptian water buffalo on behavioural reactivity and physiological responses to pain induction

Abstract

Buffaloes are an important economic source for milk and meat production and for work and draught power in Egypt. Improving management practices applied to water buffalo may not only improve their welfare but has also an economic benefit. This experiment was carried out to determine the effect of blindfold and tail bending during restraint for veterinary treatment of Egyptian buffaloes on their behavioural reactivity and physiological responses to stress. Forty-eight Egyptian water buffalo bulls, naïve to the testing situation, were arbitrarily assigned to either blindfold (visual restriction) (BF), tail bending (physical control) (TT) or control (CT) (no visual restriction or physical control) treatment during restraint. Animals were entered the squeeze chute and the sides of the chute were adjusted to make contact with the animal body so that preventing unsteady movements, and were subjected to a 3- day (day 1, 2 and 3) testing trials (injection stress) of three minutes each (1 m pre injection induction phase, 1 m injection induction phase and 1 m post injection induction phase). Heart rate (HR) was recorded using a stethoscope as soon as the animal was positioned in the squeeze chute and the respiratory rate (RR) was determined through counting the movement of flank region, and various reactivity-indicating behaviours were collected onto check sheet. Average HR decreased in both TT and BF bulls during and after stress (P= 0.001) but the reduction in HR was greater in BF bulls (67.25±3.41 and 55.00±1.08, respectively) in day 3 after stress (P= 0.001). Similarly, average RR decreased in both TT and BF bulls (P= 0.001) during and after stress but the reduction was greater in BF bulls during stress (25.38±0.53 and 19.92±0.33, respectively). Blindfolding and tail bending buffalo bulls decreased average frequency of their behavioural indicators of reactivity including: chest chute forcing prestress (P=0.01), during and post stress (P=0.001); head move (P=0.001); kicking prestress (P=0.05) during stress (P=0.001) and post stress (P=0.05); struggling move prestress, during stress (P=0.001) and post stress (P=0.05). The reduction was greater in BF bulls in case of chest chute prestress (0.08±0.05 and 0.50±0.16, respectively), struggling move during (0.33±0.02 and 0.75±0.04, respectively) and post stress (0.13±0.06 and 0.29±0.08, respectively). Taken together, both tail bend and blindfold water buffaloes decreased behavioural and physiological indicators of stress but BF appeared more beneficial and may therefore be recommended to reduce stress accompanying routine veterinary examination of buffaloes.