Research
Centre for Animal Production and Health, Centre for Terrestrial Ecosystem Science and Sustainability
2010–Animal welfare is increasingly important for the Australian livestock industries, to maintain the social licence to practice, as well as ensuring market share overseas. Improvement of animal welfare in the livestock industries requires a number of key steps, most importantly, objective measures are needed for welfare assessment to enable comparison and contrast of welfare implications of husbandry procedures or housing options.
Qualitative Behavioural Assessment (QBA) is an integrated measure that characterises behaviour as a dynamic, expressive body language. It is not necessarily what the animal is doing, but how it is doing it. Here we describe how to carry out a QBA and summarise outcomes of recent QBA studies.