| dc.description.abstract | This study was part of a larger scale project and aimed to develop an adequate checklist for future health and welfare assessments in the different segments of the companion rabbit sector in the Netherlands. The resulting checklist could then later be used during the on-site visits that are to be conducted for the larger scale project. The research question ‘Which factors are important to guarantee good quality of health and welfare in companion rabbits and how can these factors best be assessed in practice?’ led to the development of a checklist based on the Welfare Quality Project welfare criteria, while taking the definition of animal welfare as defined by Ohl & Hellebrekers (2009) into account.
Information about welfare in rabbits was gathered from the literature and the Dutch law. Preferred and undesirable situations were described. Next, a checklist was developed, with reference to the information previously gathered, which consisted of two main components:
- Questions to ask the supervisor/owner/manager on the location;
- Factors that may be observed on the location.
An appendix was developed along with the checklist, which describes the preferred and undesirable situations in short and indicates if an observation has a good influence on the health and/or welfare of the rabbit(s), a bad influence on the health and/or welfare of the rabbit(s) or no influence on the health and welfare at all. Subsequently, the checklist was validated by four experts in the field of rabbit health and welfare. Their feedback was processed. Finally, a pilot study was conducted in order to test the feasibility and practicality of the checklist. This made sure the checklist is able to serve as an accurate measurement for the health and welfare assessment in companion rabbits in the Netherlands.
The developed checklist appears to be adequate to use for the assessment of the current health and welfare status of rabbits in the various segments of the companion animal sector in the Netherlands. However, there is still space for adjustments and improvements. Further research should aim at developing methods to assess injury and illness problems that are at this point not assessable on location. Furthermore, the severity of observations that have a bad influence on the health and welfare should be determined. For now, this checklist can be used when visiting commercial breeders, traders, pet shops, garden centres, animal shelters, petting zoos and consumers to assess the current health and welfare status of companion rabbits in the Netherlands. The outcome of this assessment may be used to develop measurements to improve the health and welfare of companion rabbits in the Netherlands. | |
