Refinement Database

Database on Refinement of Housing, Husbandry, Care, and Use of Animals in Research

This database, created in 2000, is updated every four months with newly published scientific articles, books, and other publications related to improving or safeguarding the welfare of animals used in research.

Tips for using the database:

  • This landing page displays all of the publications in the database.
  • Use the drop-down menus to filter these publications by Animal Type, Setting, and/or Topic.
  • Clicking on a parent category (e.g., Rodent) will include publications relating to all the items in that category (e.g., Chinchilla, Gerbil, Guinea Pig, etc.).
  • You may also add a keyword to further narrow your search.
  • Please note that at this time, only publications dated 2010 or later (with some exceptions) can be filtered by Animal Type and Topic, and only publications dated 2020 or later (with some exceptions) can be filtered by Setting. Most publications older than 2010 can only be searched by keyword. 

Projected temperature rise in the upcoming years due to climate change has increased interest in studying the effects of heat stress in dairy cows. Environmental indices are commonly used for detecting heat stress, but have...

Lameness is a key health and welfare issue affecting commercial herds of dairy cattle, with potentially significant economic impacts due to the expense of treatment and lost milk production. Existing lameness detection methods can be...

Assessment of lameness in cattle after foot surgery is important to monitor the recovery period, to improve the long-term success and the cows’ welfare. This longitudinal multicenter retrospective study was carried out to evaluate the...

The effectiveness of clove oil and cautery disbudding on horn growth was evaluated in goat kids. The study used 243 Saanen doe kids (4±1 days old; mean±SD) on two goat farms that were disbudded with...

Completely updated and revised, and with a new author team, this second edition of Farm Animal Behaviour continues to provide essential information on normal and stereotypic behaviors in a wide variety of farm animals to...

Objective: To analyse the effectiveness of intrafunicular lidocaine and intravenous flunixin for reducing pain and signs of stress in lambs undergoing surgical castration. Design: Randomised controlled trial. Setting: One university teaching hospital in Italy. Participants...

The EU Directive 2010/63/EU changed the requirements regarding the use of laboratory animals and raised important issues related to assessing the severity of all procedures undertaken on laboratory animals. However, quantifiable parameters to assess severity...

Dairy cow welfare is an important consideration for optimal production in the dairy industry. Lameness affects the welfare of dairy herds by limiting productivity. Whilst the application of LS systems helps in identifying lame cows...

The aim of the study was to assess pain in Bos indicus bull calves following surgical castration. Forty-two animals were randomised to four groups: no castration (NC, n = 6); castration with pre-operative lidocaine (CL...

A number of mutilating procedures, such as dehorning in cattle and goats and beak trimming in laying hens, are common in farm animal husbandry systems in an attempt to prevent or solve problems, such as...

Living together in large social communities within an enriched environment stimulates self-motivated activity in rats. We developed a modular housing system in which a single unit can accommodate as many as 48 rats and contains...

The RSPCA/UFAW Rodent (and now Rabbit) Welfare Group held a one-day meeting on 1 November 2016 at the University of Edinburgh and was attended by 70 delegates. Presentation topics included refinements in blood sampling rodents...

Judgement bias tests of animal affect and hence welfare assume that the animal’s responses to ambiguous stimuli, which may herald positive or negative outcomes, are under instrumental control and reflect ‘optimism’ or ‘pessimism’ about what...

Scientists and laypeople have long expressed concern that animals in non-enriched, unchanging environments might experience boredom. However, this had attracted little empirical study: the state is difficult to assess without verbal self-reports, and spontaneous behavioural...

For dairy cattle breeding as well as animal welfare science reliability and validity issues regarding measures of cows’ responsiveness towards humans are relevant. The objective of this study was to investigate reliability and validity aspects...

A number of studies have looked at whether the percentage of visible eye whites could be a reliable and dynamic tool for measuring emotional state in cattle. In this study we have built upon previous...

Qualitative behaviour assessment (QBA) was used to validate previous published interpretation whether human stroking has beneficial effects on lambs prematurely separated from their mothers. For a period of 8 weeks a familiar human (FH) subjected...

Human decision making is modified by emotional state. Rodents exhibit similar biases during interpretation of ambiguous cues that can be altered by affective state manipulations. In this study, the impact of negative affective state on...

Until recently, research in animal welfare science has mainly focused on negative experiences like pain and suffering, often neglecting the importance of assessing and promoting positive experiences. In rodents, specific facial expressions have been found...

Over 234,000 rats were used in regulated procedures in the UK in 2014, many of which may have resulted in some degree of pain. When using animals in research, there is an ethical and legal...

The post-operative effects of three formulations of topical anaesthetic and a cornual nerve block on the sensitivity of scoop dehorning wounds in calves were compared in two trials. In Trial 1, 21 female Holstein dairy...

The main objectives of this prospective cohort study were a) to describe lameness prevalence at drying off in large high producing New York State herds based on visual locomotion score (VLS) and identify potential cow...

Ear posture, or the frequency of postural changes, may reflect various emotional states of animals. In adult sheep (Ovis aries), the 'forward' ear posture has been associated with negative experiences whereas the 'plane' posture has...

Fracture healing is a complex regeneration process which produces new bone tissue without scar formation. However, fracture healing disorders occur in approximately 10% of human patients and cause severe pain and reduced quality of life...

Postoperative monitoring of pain and distress in small rodents is not standardized, and widely accepted score sheets are not available. Here we describe a score sheet used in abdominal surgery of rodents, with particular reference...