Our focus
Currently the focus of many animal care professionals working with behaviour is to train our animals for medical care. This has been called pro active care. The question arrises if we are actually applying pro active care when we train our animals for behaviours such as hoof trims, beak trims or in some cases extending locomotion. Why this question? If we focus on an outcome instead of why the outcome can be a problem we forget to focus on the holistic approach. I mean aren’t we just focusing on the what if this or that happens we train our animals so we covered it. We like to think about what if we make sure these situations won’t happen at all.
We are often complacent with the current situation and therefore we like to train animals for pro active training goals. We need to put the energy in a proper environment where it is less likely or not likely at all where for example problems with the hooves or beak will happen (or any other situation).
Foraging helps muscle gain and maintain their nails
A simple example is when we talk about chickens. Chickens need proper leg muscles, proper nails, and a well maintained beak. Now either I can train the chickens for nail clipping, beak maintenance and fitness which might be a pro active way for their care but actually it is not. Chickens forage for about 95% of their time. Within this foraging they use their claws and beak to find food sources. In return through a variety of different substrates their beak and nails stay healthy and their leg muscles are working out. Which means from a pro active stand point it gives a lot more benefits to look at their environment to be pro active to their care then training a behaviour to be pro active in their care.
As animal care professionals animal training is not what we should solely focus on which happens all to often. Don’t get me wrong, it is a great way to reach specific goals. Animal care specialists should not focus on pro active care in that sense we should focus on pro active behaviour management and this is where the difference comes in. This means enrichment should be applied to reach the behaviour needs of the species in question. Nutrition intake should be based on the nutrition intake + behaviour reflecting from their wild counter parts.
Lions need more then a daily meal
For example lions have a 13% successrate hunting in the wild. When they are successful they eat for a couple of days. They rest up to 20 hours. Understandable after a 13% success rate and a lot offood at once. Imagine when we do not reach this behavioural need. We have animals that now how to replace their need with another need. This is where stereotype behaviour comes in. Which comes with challenges on it’s own. Are we going to ditract these animals with enrichment as to be pro active to these challenging behaviours? Or are we going to give them the chance through a thought through program to practice their needs so stereotype behaviour will not happen?
At the end we have the responsibility to take care of the animals in question. The focus should not be pro active training, we should be focusing first on a proper environment where the challenges will not occur, and if they still happen we should discuss again if our environment is good enough, probably not. This means that pro active training might as well be a result of reactive holistic management.
What about the discussion of being proactive with our holistic approach? Basically you will have no behaviour challenges and all you train your animals for is to confirm you are on the right track.
Food for thought.
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