Promoting good primate welfare outside of daylight hours is an important task. The responsibility to provide a complex environment and environmental enrichment is an essential element of primate wellbeing programs that should be approached from a 24-h perspective and planned according to the species and individual needs, including giving animals the ability to interact with and control their environment during hours when animal care staff are not present. One must be aware, however, that their needs may differ at night-time from their care needs during the day when staff are present. Assessing welfare and providing enrichment during times when staff are not on hand can be achieved through the use of a variety of technologies, such as night-view cameras, animal-centred technologies, and data loggers. This paper will address the relevant topics concerning the care and welfare of primates during off-hours, and the use of related technologies to facilitate and assess wellbeing at these times.

Cautery disbudding is a painful procedure and major welfare concern in organic dairy production, which lacks effective and easily implemented methods of pain control. Willow bark (WB) has been used to treat chronic pain in humans, but there is no scientific evidence that WB has an analgesic effect in dairy cattle. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of an oral WB bolus on heart rate, salivary cortisol concentration, ocular temperature, and lying behavior (time, bouts, and bout duration) of 42 Holstein and crossbred calves. Heifer calves were born at the University of Minnesota West Central Research and Outreach Center, Morris, MN organic dairy. Calves were disbudded from 4 to 7 weeks of age (42 ± 3 d) and randomly assigned to one of three treatments (n = 14 calves/treatment): hot iron disbudding with lidocaine (LID; 5 mL per horn bud), hot iron disbudding with oral WB (200 mg/kg), or sham disbudding (SD). Saliva samples and thermal images were collected 1 h before disbudding, at disbudding, and 5 min, 10 min, and every 30 min until 240 min after disbudding. Cardiac monitors recorded heart rates continuously throughout the 5 h study period. HOBO loggers recorded lying behavior during the 72 h following disbudding. The variables included in the statistical model for analyses were fixed effects of treatment, time, and the interaction between treatment and time, and calf was a random effect. The mean heart rate of LID calves (123.3 ± 2.8 beats/minute) and WB calves (124.5 ± 3.2 beats/minute) were higher than SD calves (110.8 ± 2.3 beats/minute). Salivary cortisol concentrations were higher for the LID calves (103.8 pg/mL) and for the WB calves (103.4 pg/mL) than for the SD calves (85.5 pg/mL). The ocular temperature was not affected by treatment group. There were fewer lying bouts 24 to 48 h after disbudding compared to the first 24 h after disbudding in both the LID and WB treatment groups. Treatment group did not affect lying time or lying bout duration. Neither LID nor WB alleviated the pain of calves throughout the post-disbudding period. The results highlighted the need to discover suitable options for pain mitigation of calves in organic livestock production.

Based on projected climatic trends, the U.S. dairy industry faces escalating heat stress challenges, with milk production losses projected to reach 1.4 kg/day per cow by the 2050s and 1.9 kg/day per cow by the 2080s, resulting in economic losses of $1.7 billion and $2.2 billion, respectively. While extensive cooling mechanisms are in place, they cannot fully mitigate heat stress effects. Thermotolerance, influenced by physiological and behavioral traits, varies significantly among individual cows and is crucial for sustaining dairy productivity. This paper presents an approach for automatically monitoring and recognizing behavior for dairy cows potentially relevant to thermotolerance, which utilizes various Machine Learning (ML) (e.g., CNN and YOLOv8) and Computer Vision (CV) (e.g., Video Processing and Annotation) techniques aimed at quantifying key behavioral indicators, specifically drinking frequency, brush use-behaviors, and social interactions such as headbutting. We evaluated the developed system using two different video datasets. The first dataset was captured using cameras installed at a side angle, while the second dataset was obtained using top-down camera views. Evaluation results showed that the YOLOv8 and CNN models achieved classification accuracies of 93% and 96%, respectively, on the first dataset, while the second dataset yielded 94% for YOLOv8 and 96% for CNN. Beyond experimental validation, the model is currently deployed for large-scale analysis of over 38,000 video recordings from a commercial ranch in Texas. This deployment enables automated extraction of behavioral event counts, specifically drinking and brushing, for each video, providing high-resolution behavioral summaries at scale. These findings show the robustness and operational viability of the system. The insights gained from this work hold significant promise for advancing genetic selection and management practices, equipping the dairy industry to proactively address heat stress and enhance overall herd resilience in the face of evolving climatic challenges.

Disbudding is a standard procedure on most US dairy farms, but organic options to alleviate pain are limited. The objective of this study was to assess the post-disbudding analgesic effects of 2 organic pain relief methods (Dull It, Dr. Paul's Lab, Mazomanie, WI; willow bark, Nature's Way, Green Bay, WI) on the heart rate, ocular temperature, salivary cortisol concentration, and lying behavior (time, bouts, and bout duration) of 53 preweaning Holstein and crossbred dairy calves born at the West Central Research and Outreach Center in Morris, MN. Calves were disbudded with a cautery iron between 5 and 7 wk of age (44 ± 4 d) and randomly assigned to 1 of 3 treatments: lidocaine only (LA; 5 mL per horn bud; n = 18), lidocaine and Dull It (DI; 5 mL under the tongue immediately after and 1 h after disbudding; n = 18), and lidocaine and willow bark (WB; 200 mg/kg; n = 17). Polar H10 heart rate monitors recorded heart rates for all calves continuously throughout the 5-h study period and data were analyzed in 5-min intervals. The HOBO loggers recorded lying behavior for 95-h following disbudding in 1-min intervals. Thermal images of the eye were captured approximately every 20 s beginning 5 min before and ending 5 min after disbudding for all calves. Saliva samples were collected from 30 randomly selected "minimally-invasive" calves 1 h before disbudding, at the time of disbudding, and at 5 min, 10 min, and every 30 min until 240 min after disbudding. The remaining 23 calves served as a "noninvasive" group to control for stress caused by repeated sampling. The mean heart rate of DI calves (132.9 ± 2.2 beats/min) was lower than that of calves in the WB treatment (141.9 ± 2.5 beats/min) during the 4-h following disbudding. The LA calves (136.2 ± 2.4 beats/min) had similar heart rates to both the DI calves and WB calves. Treatment group did not affect ocular temperature, salivary cortisol concentration, and lying behavior. These findings indicate that DI and WB offer little to no analgesic effect. This research highlights the urgent need to find effective alternative options for pain mitigation in organic dairy production.

Environmental enrichment is essential for promoting species-specific behaviors and enhancing the welfare of zoo-housed animals. This study examined the behavioral responses of two juvenile male binturongs (Arctictis binturong) at the Minnesota Zoo to three enrichment stimuli: lavender oil (olfactory), thawed fish (olfactory and dietary), and hard-boiled egg (olfactory and dietary). Their behaviors were recorded using scan sampling before and after enrichment exposure, focusing on locomotion, foraging, resting, and visitor visibility. Food-based enrichments, particularly the hard-boiled egg, significantly increased foraging behavior, while lavender oil and thawed fish produced minimal behavioral changes. Locomotion and visibility remained stable across the conditions, although a slight increase in resting was observed with lavender oil. No evidence of scent-marking disruption was noted, and individual differences appeared to influence inactivity levels. These findings highlight the potential of biologically relevant, food-based enrichment to stimulate natural behaviors in binturongs and emphasize the importance of species-specific enrichment strategies. Future research should explore a broader range of olfactory cues, assess long-term behavioral responses, and incorporate physiological measures to further evaluate enrichment impacts on binturong welfare.