On-going studies : Qualitative Behavioural Assessment (QBA) of positive emotional state of stabled horses

“Quality of life (QoL)” concerns the quality of a horse entire relationship with its environment, of how it lives its life. Health is an important aspect, but nowadays it is widely accepted that the concept of QoL and welfare includes not simply the absence of negative experiences, but rather is primarily the presence of positive experiences associated with positive emotional states. A novel approach in ethology regards positive emotional states as multi-purpose reward cycles and hypothesize that repeated disruption of rewarding cycles could alter behaviour shown during pleasant stimulation, mapping into long term assessment of positive welfare. In horses grooming is associated with pleasure and it has positive affective and physiological effects. Qualitative Behavioural Assessment (QBA) can be used to quantify positive aspects of animal welfare as well as some measure of the affective state of the animals. This study aims to evaluate if QBA can be used on farm to reliably assess positive emotional states of stabled horses experiencing a pleasant interaction with human (grooming). To this end, we designed and will test the inter-observer reliability of a fixed rating scale for QBA of horses. On the basis of previous QBA research with horses and consultation in a focus group with eleven horse experts, we designed a rating scale of 36 descriptors. The rating scale will be tested by two cohorts of four assessors on ten horse facilities; in each facility, 70% of animals will be randomly evaluated. The observation protocol will be as follows: the experimenter enters the home box and performs the manual imitation of the allo-grooming at the withers of the horse for 3 min before exiting the box. Two cohorts of four observers trained in the use of QBA, are positioned outside the box and observe the interaction. At the end of each observation time, observers have 1,5 min of time to score the assessed horse on all of the terms of the fixed descriptor list, by ticking the scale at the appropriate point. This score is recorded as the measure of the distance in millimetres between the left ‘minimum’ point of the scale and the point where the observer’s thick crosses the line. For each observer, a data spreadsheet is created containing the scores of all the horses scored. The inter-observer reliability of the QBA scores attributed to the different horses will be tested using Kendall Correlation Coefficient W.