Nutrition, Feeding and Animal Welfare

Abstract

It is essential for the welfare of animals that adequate food, containing essential nutrients, is provided and ingested (National Research Council (NRC) 1995 ; Beynen & Coates 2001 ; Ritskes Hoitinga 2004 ). Physical and mental processes are dependent on and infl uenced both by what is ingested, and when and how food is eaten (Ritskes Hoitinga & Chwalibog 2003 ). Food ingestion is essential for homeostasis, a regulated state of internal balance (Strubbe 2003 ; Ritskes Hoitinga & Strubbe 2004 ), although it always leads to some homeostatic disturbance, for example through the thermogenic effect. As many bodily functions naturally show biological rhythms, fl uctuations due to food intake may result in good animal welfare, as long as the animal is able to return to the homeostatic state. Introducing species specifi c fl uctuations into the laboratory feeding process may, therefore, contribute positively to the welfare of laboratory animals. This chapter provides some key concepts in nutrition, with the aim of helping animal care staff to prevent the occurrence of nutrition based pathological and behavioural disorders in animals in their care. Using and implementing this basic knowledge will not only support good animal health and welfare, but will also contribute to standardisation and replicability of experiments. In the second part of the chapter, aspects related to feeding, rhythmicity and environmental factors and procedures are discussed. A range of examples is provided to illustrate how nutrition and feeding can infl uence animal welfare and experimental results. The authors suggest that better animal welfare can be achieved when nutrition is better adapted to the species specifi c adaptive capabilities for returning to homeostasis (Ritskes Hoitinga & Strubbe 2004 ). Thus, refi ning the feeding process by providing correct nutrition, together with appropriate foraging and feeding opportunities, should contribute to the animals ’ welfare as well as improve the quality of the science by reducing variation resulting from stress.