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. 

There is an increasing amount of consideration being paid to cattle welfare and enrichment, both at agricultural research institutions and via welfare audits on commercial operations. A crucial element of these welfare and enrichment evaluations...

At Pfizer’s Pearl River site, rabbits are socially housed in pairs or triples in dog runs that have been converted into rabbit pens. The daily husbandry and maintenance of these pens, however, proved to be...

Pain compromises the welfare of animals. A prerequisite for being able to alleviate pain is that we are able to recognize it. Potential behavioural signs of pain were investigated for dairy cattle with the aim...

The quality of the relationship between cattle and their caretakers is important for animal welfare and productivity. Nevertheless, the influence of gentle interactions on group-housed dairy calves has not been thoroughly studied so far. We...

Group housing is often assumed to improve the welfare of gregarious species. Whether this is actually the case depends on the advantages (e.g. more opportunity for social and locomotor behaviour) and disadvantages (e.g. increased fighting...

Breeding does are usually housed one doe per cage, but there is an increased interest in (semi-)group housing systems designed to improve welfare. However, there is a lack of information on how such systems actually...

This work investigated the differences in the reactivity of Sarda (primiparous n = 18, multiparous n = 17) and Dorset (multiparous n = 8) breeds of sheep and their singleton lambs to two challenging test...

Anticipatory behaviours may serve a useful tool in studying positive emotional states in animals. This study aimed to investigate if lambs express anticipatory behaviours for opportunities to play or a food reward and if these...

Dietary composition and presentation impacts on the behaviour of animals, and failure to provide a suitable diet can lead to reduced welfare through the development of poor health, the inability to express normal behaviours and...

Rodents and primates deprived of early social contact exhibit deficits in learning and behavioural flexibility. They often also exhibit apparent signs of elevated anxiety, although the relationship between these effects has not been studied. To...

Space allowance at the feeding places often forces goats to feed in close proximity, that is, less than their individual distances. In consequence, agonistic behaviour may increase as well as stress and injuries, while access...

The study of laboratory animal behavior has increased steadily over the last decade, with expanding emphasis on a variety of commonly used species. In the United States, this trend was initially focused on species for...

Infrared thermal imaging is a non-destructive testing technology that can be used to determine the superficial temperature of objects. This technology has an increasing use in detecting diseases and distress in animal husbandry within the...

The most common housing system for reproduction rabbits, individual cage housing on a wire floor, is increasingly scrutinized because of its potential detrimental impact on animal welfare. We compared three types of housing: (1) individual...

For infectious disease studies, assessment of feline health is traditionally limited to metrics such as body temperature (BT), change in body weight (BW), and clinical signs (CS). Recently, behavioral ethograms designed for assessment of rabbits...

The Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals requires that all animals, without veterinary or study exemptions, be socially housed. Our current caging only allows enough floor space to house one large rabbit...

The aim of this study was to identify behaviours and ear postures linked to the appetitive, consummatory and post-consummatory motivational phases of play in male lambs, and to evaluate how cortisol was affected by play...

Animal welfare science is increasingly concerned with the promotion of positive emotions in animals, yet little is known about how to measure them. We examined whether ear postures in dairy cows were reliable indicators of...

In practice, consideration is given to providing most of the species used in research,testing and education withsome level of environmental enrichment. However, although the current level of awareness and understanding about the benefits of environmental...

Group-housing of rabbit does may be preferred from welfare point of view. However, group-housing causes agonistic behaviour which may cause severe injuries. Severe injuries may be prevented by offering hiding places for attacked does. Providing...

For anyone who has housed rabbits in an artificial plastic environment, what to provide as a nonfood enrichment can be an issue. Nonfood enrichment, or environmental enrichment, can be any toy, engaging sights or sounds...

There is evidence that the presence of a conspecific can alter the experience of pain in humans and other animals. This ‘social buffering’ may be mediated by factors such as relatedness and familiarity. This study...

Early social housing is known to benefit cognitive development in laboratory animals. Pre-weaned dairy calves are typically separated from their dam immediately after birth and housed alone, but no work to date has addressed the...

Housing preweaned dairy calves in pairs rather than individually has been found to positively affect behavioral responses in novel social and environmental situations, but concerns have been raised that close contact among very young animals...

The question of whether it is better to house animals in groups rather than alone deals with the unresolved issues at the heart of animal welfare. In particular, we need to be able to rank...