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. 

Isolation during calving is a common dairy cow behavior, however it has not been examined in large outdoor group settings. The provision of “hides” was monitored for its impact on calving location and cow–calf behavior...

Lameness remains a major concern for animal welfare and productivity in modern dairy production. Even though a trend toward loose housing systems exists and the public expects livestock to be kept under conditions where freedom...

This is a literature review of the effects of humans' relationships with farm animals on animal productivity and welfare, including the following topics: definition of the concept and description of different tests that have been...

Airflow inside naturally ventilated dairy (NVD) buildings is highly variable and difficult to understand due to the lack of precious measuring techniques with the existing methods. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was applied to investigate the...

Cows housed indoors with cubicles are probably more restricted in their choice of lying posture and orientation compared with cows housed on pasture. We therefore compared lying postures on pasture in Uruguay and the Netherlands...

Management systems in modern dairy farms is an important issue in relation to animal comfort and welfare. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of feed delivery frequency on the behavior patterns...

Recent scientific evidence for fish sentience has stressed the need for novel sentience-based detection tools of fish welfare impairment in commercial farms. In order to mimic a well-characterised stress situation, rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) were...

The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of stand-off surface type on cow lying behaviour, cleanliness and lameness. One hundred and sixty Friesian × Jersey crossbreed, pregnant non-lactating dairy cows were blocked...

There are various methods to perform castration of cattle, but surgical castration is the most common. Although it is well documented that surgical procedures inflict pain, analgesic use is usually omitted for surgical castration of...

In temperate climates where cows are primarily managed at pasture shortages of grass could result in nutritional deficits for the cow and may have a variety of behavioural consequences. Lying behaviour is one of the...

The objective of the present study was to compare the synchronisation of the lying, feeding and standing behaviour of bulls housed in an uninsulated barn and in a pasture. Dairy (Ayrshire and Holstein-Friesian) and beef...

This open access book is a printed edition of the Special Issue on Welfare of Cultured and Experimental Fishes that was published in the journal Fishes. The PDF is free for download.

Emotional contagion has recently been described in fish but whether it is affected by familiarity is not known. We tested whether the sight of a distressed conspecific elicited fear in zebrafish, Danio rerio, and whether...

Nursing a calf suppresses postpartum ovarian activity prolonging the period of anestrus. Diverse methods are used to reduce the effect of suckling; the most popular, restricted suckling, reduces the number of encounters mother-calf. Temporal weaning...

This study aimed to assess the relationship between stockperson behavior and buffalo behavior. The research was carried out in 27 buffalo farms. The behavior of stockpeople and animals during milking and the avoidance distance at...

Bedding quality and cow lying time were measured during five weeks in a normal farm practice (NFP) off-paddock system with no bedding refreshment. Two groups of 100 non-lactating dairy cows were compared to groups of...

Knowledge of physiological portal and hepatic blood flow in cattle is essential for the use of Doppler ultrasound for diagnostic purposes. In this paper, we describe a protocol for the systematic ultrasonography evaluation of the...

The human–animal relationship is an important welfare parameter in animal welfare assessment in cows, and the avoidance distance of cows to a stranger at the feed bunk is measured to assess this relationship. The assessment...

Respiration rate (RR) is commonly used to assess states of cattle health and welfare such as pain, stress and disease. Traditionally, RR is measured by counting flank movements, a method often considered to be labour-intensive...

Cortisol levels in fish skin mucus have shown to be good stress indicators in farm fish exposed to different stressors. Its applicability in free-ranging animals subject to long-term environmental stressors though remains to be explored...

Fish batches are often transported from aquacultures to laboratory facilities, and this fact triggers a pre-stressed condition that can cause alterations in both physiological and behavioural status of animals. The acclimation before fish trials is...

The RSPCA/UFAW Rodent (and now Rabbit) Working Group has held a one-day meeting every autumn for the last 25 years, so that its members can discuss current welfare research, exchange views on welfare issues and...

Underwater sound fields can be complex, both in open water and small tank environments. Here we measured 1) spatial variation in artificially elevated sound levels in a small fish tank for both particle motion and...

The objectives of this study were to determine the difficulty of implementing changes to improve cow comfort on Canadian dairy farms, to determine if any changes were implemented to improve dairy cow comfort following an...

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of a single subcutaneous injection of meloxicam on scrotal healing, inflammatory response, and behaviour in castrated or castrated and branded beef calves for 42 d...