WelfareSense A Behavioral Assessment Framework for Improving Domestic Animal Management Practices

Abstract

Increasingly, human observation of the welfare state of domestic animals is subjective and occurs infrequently, and this makes the detection of early signs of poor welfare state for animals more difficult for caretakers and institutions. This paper introduces WelfareSense, a behavioural assessment system that can be used to systematically evaluate domestic animal welfare status using indicators in companion animal, farm animal and shelter settings. It consists of six observable domains of behaviour – locomotion and activity level, feeding and drinking, resting and posture patterns, social/ interaction behaviour, vocalization patterns and stereotypic/ abnormal behaviour – and integrates them into a composite welfare indicator score which can be used for management decision-making. WelfareSense is designed as a modular system where behavioral data are captured, indicators are derived from this data, scores are weighted, and thresholds are used to classify them, with a recommendation layer that converts the scores into meaningful management recommendations. The framework is derived from existing welfare science, such as the Five Domains model and behavioural welfare indicators, and highlights the need to promote the practical application by the caretaker, who may not be specialised in ethological science. This paper outlines the conceptual design and scoring logic of WelfareSense, explores illustrative indicator weighting applied in its behavioural scoring module and provides a path forward towards empirical implementation and validation. Additionally, the discussion covers implementation issues such as data collection burden, inter-observer reliability and species-specific calibration requirements. WelfareSense is designed to be a stepping stone to light touch, low cost, welfare monitoring which can be easily adapted to a variety of different contexts of domestic animal management, used in addition to, not instead of, veterinary and ethological knowledge, and to foster more consistent and evidence-based animal care practices at the point of daily animal management.