Cloud-based welfare platform
"An effective welfare monitoring scheme should aim to reliably and repeatedly monitor key and broadly accepted welfare measures or indices.".
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— John L. Barnett & Paul H. Hemsworth, Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, 2009
KEEN TO try out the ALl-ANIMAL WELFARE TEMPLATE?
If you'd like to see whether the platform and welfare template might be beneficial for your needs, please get in touch through our contact page and we can provide you with a coupon code for a free 6 month trial!!
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AnimalCare Software have designed the software so that you can customise and tailor it to your own needs, so if you have a vision of what you want the platform to do, get in touch with either AWE or ACS to let them know- we'd be happy to help and hear your ideas!
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Projects
A KEY COLLABORATION FOR A BIG IDEA​
At this point, most people agree that to successfully understand and improve captive animal welfare, there is a need to conduct regular, standardised assessments to be able to track the animal's state over time and in response to different contexts. But it's also true that welfare assessments are still very labour-intensive and so aren't applied as much as facilities would like. One major limiting factor is the time it takes to enter and analyse data!
In 2019, Animal Welfare Expertise (AWE) teamed up with AnimalCare Software to tackle this problem. We have developed a digital welfare template that allows zoos, aquariums, sanctuaries and in fact any animal facilities to collect the most important welfare data, and analyse it quickly and easily so that they can identify any issues that need addressing.
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AnimalCare Software (ACS) are leading the field with their cloud-based record-keeping system, which is providing hundreds facilities with a simple and customisable platform on which to collect daily husbandry and medical data. Find out more about their platform here.
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An all-animal Welfare template​
AWE and ACS worked on developing the welfare template for over a year, where we used our combined scientific and software skills to make sure we created an accurate, practical and user-friendly template.
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The All-Animal Welfare Template provides a set of 16 welfare measures and is:
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evidence-based (5 Domains of Welfare)
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generally applicable to any animal species
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for both individuals and groups
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customisable
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animal-based i.e. it captures aspects of the animal's actual behaviour, health or cognition, something which is usually hard to standardise.
In the video below, Dave from ACS goes through the template and demonstrates the awesome "compare" function of the software, where you can simply click on your chosen welfare measures then see a graph over time which can reveal how they might be linked. In the video example, it seems as if visitor presence might be impacting enrichment interaction: you can see how this data could inform management changes and lead to an instantaneous welfare benefit.
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