Is transport distance correlated with animal welfare and carcass quality of reindeer (Rangifer tarandus tarandus)?

A serological screening for potential viral pathogens among semi-domesticated Eurasian tundra reindeer (Rangifer tarandus tarandus) in Finland

BACKGROUND

Reindeer herding and husbandry is a traditional and important livelihood in Fennoscandia, and about 200,000 semi-domesticated reindeer are herded in Finland. Climatic changes, leading to ice-locked winter pastures, and encroachment of pasture-land have led to changes in reindeer husbandry, increasing the extent of supplementary or full ration feeding, which has become very common in Finland. Keeping reindeer in corrals or gathering them at permanent feeding sites will increase nose-to-nose contact between animals and they may be exposed to poor hygienic conditions. This may impact the epidemiology of infectious diseases, such as viral infections. The aim of this study was to investigate Finnish semi-domesticated reindeer for exposure to viral pathogens. Blood samples were collected from 596 reindeer (358 calves, 238 adults) in 2015, from nine reindeer slaughterhouses, representing most of the reindeer herding regions in Finland. Plasma samples were investigated for antibodies against a selection of known and potential reindeer viral pathogens by using enzyme linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA).

RESULTS

The screening suggested that alphaherpesvirus and gammaherpesvirus (malignant catarrhal fever virus group; MCFV) were enzootic in the reindeer population, with a seroprevalence of 46.5% (range at slaughterhouse level 28.6-64.3%) and 29.0% (range 3.5-62.2%), respectively. Whereas the seroprevalence was significantly higher for alphaherpesvirus among adult reindeer (91.2%) as compared to calves (16.8%), no age difference was revealed for antibodies against gammaherpesvirus. For alphaherpesvirus, the seroprevalence in the northernmost region, having the highest animal density (animals/km2), was significantly higher (55.6%) as compared to the southernmost region (36.2%), whereas the seroprevalence pattern for gammaherpesvirus indicated the opposite, with 8.1% in the north and 50.0% in the south. Four reindeer (0.7%) had antibodies against Pestivirus, whereas no antibodies were detected against Bluetongue virus or Schmallenbergvirus.

CONCLUSIONS

Alphaherpesvirus and gammaherpesvirus (MCFV) seems to be enzootic in the Finnish reindeer population, similar to other reindeer herds in Fennoscandia, whereas the exposure to Pestivirus was low compared to findings in Norway and Sweden. The ongoing changes in the reindeer herding industry necessitate knowledge on reindeer health and diseases that may impact animal welfare and health of reindeer as well as the economy of the reindeer herding industry.

Welfare Assessment of Invertebrates: Adapting the Animal Welfare Assessment Grid (AWAG) for Zoo Decapods and Cephalopods

Consumer demand for invertebrates is on the rise as their numbers in the wild dwindle. However, with the growing conservation efforts of modern zoos and aquariums, and evidence from over 300 studies showing that invertebrates are capable of sentience, public interest, and moral concern for welfare of invertebrates have increased. The challenge for zoos and aquariums is in developing an objective and repeatable method for evaluating welfare that can be applied to invertebrates in zoological collections. Recently introduced into zoological collection management is the Animal Welfare Assessment Grid (AWAG). The AWAG helps to identify negative and positive welfare states, through assessing animal- and environmental-based indicators to make changes that lead to a better quality of life. Originally developed for the assessment of laboratory primates, the system has been successfully adapted to assess a variety of taxa across different environments, facilitated by the development of cloud-based software. In this study, the AWAG has been adapted to assess the cumulative lifetime experience of captive decapods and cephalopods at two different institutions, Marwell Zoo and National Marine Aquarium. This study has provided further evidence that the AWAG is adaptable and demonstrates the first time any objective scoring system has been successfully adapted for use in invertebrates. Through graphical representation, the results show that the AWAG identifies changes in welfare scores that can be attributed to specific events and can be used to predict the future vulnerability of species to welfare changes and suggest alternative management methods. This monitoring tool provides a versatile method of implementing practical welfare monitoring in zoos and aquariums.

The annual, temporal and spatial pattern of Setaria tundra outbreaks in Finnish reindeer: a mechanistic transmission model approach

Background

In northern Finland (Lapland), reindeer are reared as semi-domesticated animals. The region has a short summer season of 2–3 months, yet reindeer are infected with the mosquito-borne filarioid parasite Setaria tundra. The infection causes peritonitis and perihepatitis, which cause significant economic losses due to reduced body weight of infected animals. The objective of this study was to: (i) describe the spatial and temporal pattern of outbreaks in three different areas across Finnish Lapland; and (ii) construct a temperature-driven mechanistic transmission model to quantify the potential role of temperature on intensity of S. tundra transmission in reindeer.

Methods

We developed a temperature-driven transmission model able to predict the number of S. tundra potentially transmitted from an infectious reindeer. We applied the model to the years 2004–2015, and compared the predictions to the proportion of reindeer whose livers were condemned due to S. tundra infection at the time of slaughter.

Results

The mean proportion of liver condemnation increased in reindeer slaughtered in late autumn/winter compared to earlier dates. The outbreaks were geographically clustered each year but there were no fixed foci where outbreaks occurred. Larger outbreaks were recorded in the southern regions of reindeer-herding areas compared to the central or northern parts of Lapland. Our model showed that temperatures never allowed for transmission of more than a single generation of S. tundra each season. In southern (Kuusamo) and central (Sodankylä) Lapland, our model predicted an increasing trend from 1979 to 2015 for both the duration of the effective transmission period of S. tundra (P < 0.001) and for the potential number of L3 S. tundra larvae being transmitted from an infectious reindeer (P < 0.001).

Conclusions

The effective transmission period for S. tundra in reindeer is very short in Lapland, but it increased over the period studied. Only one generation of S. tundra can be transmitted in one season among reindeer in Lapland. Increasing temperatures may facilitate a range expansion and increasing duration of effective transmission period for S. tundra.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (10.1186/s13071-018-3159-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.