ManyGoats – an initiative to promote open and reproducible research on goat behaviour and welfare

Most studies on goat behaviour have been conducted on groups of animals characterised by specific individual factors and living conditions. Due to the contextual idiosyncrasies of individual testing sites, the results of individual studies could only be valid for the particular group of animals and thus may not always be reproducible. However, robust results are necessary to ensure that outcomes are broadly relevant; this is vital if such results are intended to contribute to improved husbandry and management conditions, and ultimately better animal welfare. Multi-site approaches can offer a resource-effi cient opportunity to tackle this problem and increase the external validity of scientifi c results. For this reason, we established the ManyGoats initiative; our aim is to increase the generalisability of findings in research on goat behaviour and cognition by implementing identical experimental protocols and simultaneously testing animals across different facilities around the world. The initiative will also aim at improving training and knowledge transfer in goat behaviour research and will adhere to Open Science principles, making our work transparent, inclusive and readily accessible. To date, the ManyGoats initiative consists of more than 30 researchers across five continents, with expertise in goat behaviour, animal welfare, veterinary medicine, statistical modelling and animal ethics, but more researchers/labs are invited to join the network. In our first proof-of-concept study (‘ManyGoats1’), we will focus on goats› behavioural responses to different human attentional states during an Avoidance Distance test. To increase heterogeneity in our sample and identify the factors that contribute to behavioural variation, we will test a diverse range of subjects (i.e. all sexes, different ages, breeds, uses including dairy, meat, fibre and companionship) in different living conditions (e.g. lab, farm, zoo settings). Currently, we are developing the ManyGoats1 test protocol and anticipate starting data collection from September 2022.