Abstract
Objective gait evaluation with a pressure sensitive walkway (PSW) has been used to assess welfare of poultry and to assess lameness and response to therapy in domestic mammals. Objective gait analysis of birds with lameness due to pododermatitis, osteoarthritis, and other common diseases could provide non-biased assessment and therapeutic monitoring for zoo clinicians. The objective of this study was to evaluate the use of a PSW for objective gait analysis in normal domestic ducks (Cairina moschata domestica) and those with experimentally induced arthritis. Eighteen healthy adult ducks walked across the PSW four times in each experiment at each time point. For experiment 1, gait parameters (step and stride distances and velocities, maximum force, impulse, and peak pressure) were calculated for each foot in each duck (time 0). For experiment 2, six of these ducks were randomly selected, anesthetized, and administered a unilateral intra-tarsal injection of monosodium urate solution to induce arthritis. Serial PSW trials were repeated at 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, and 24 hours post-injection. Gait parameters were calculated and compared at each time point, including baseline at time 0. Among the normal ducks, there were no significant differences between right and left feet for any gait parameter. Maximum force and impulse were significantly lower for the affected limb at the 3- and 4-hour time points in ducks with unilateral induced arthritis. This asymmetry was resolved by 8 hours post injection. This PSW transient arthritis model allows for objective assessment of lameness in domestic ducks with maximum force and impulse serving as the most sensitive gait parameters for lameness detection. This method has potential as a model to assess analgesic efficacy for zoo-housed waterfowl and other avian species.
Highlights
Lameness due to pododermatitis, osteoarthritis, and nutritional deficiencies are common health conditions in birds across taxa with significant impacts on welfare in human care settings
This study evaluated the pressure sensitive walkway (PSW) as an objective gait analysis tool for normal ducks and those with experimentally induced arthritis as an avian model with the goal of using it for future analgesia efficacy studies
Among the ducks in experiment 1, there were no significant differences between right and left feet for any gait parameter
Summary
Osteoarthritis, and nutritional deficiencies are common health conditions in birds across taxa with significant impacts on welfare in human care settings. The thermal threshold model conditions a bird to stand on a perch that differentially increases in temperature under one foot causing the bird to lift its foot to escape the stimulus. The bird will require a stronger stimulus to lift its foot (increased thermal threshold) [6,8,9,10]. An incapacitance meter perch measures the amount of weight placed on a limb that has had a MSU solution injected into the tarsal joint. The bird will bear more weight on the affected limb than without treatment [7,11,12]. There has yet to be a dynamic avian nociception model developed to evaluate lameness and response to treatment in aquatic birds at a walk or run
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