Camille MC Raoult, PhD

In January 2020, I started working with Prof. Dr. E. von Borell in the Department of Animal Husbandry and Ecology, Institute of Agricultural and Nutritional Sciences, at the Martin-Luther-University of Halle-Wittenberg (Germany). I am currently working on farm animal husbandry, emotions and welfare. In particular, I am developing a research project to assess pig emotional reactions to different situations varying in valence and arousal by using multiple non-invasive indicators. During the pilot study, I also tested the piglets in a 60-seconds backtest, a test performed to find out the piglet copying strategies (as reactive or proactive according to their number of escape attempts and vocalisations).
As part of another PhD project, the MLU is still studying the effect of LED-light intensity and colour temperature on the preference behaviour of weaned piglets, with further projects to be developed in this respect.
I am also helping PhD students with their dissertations and publications and co-supervising Bachelor and Master students.

From June 2019 to December 2019, I was collaborating with the Centre for Proper Housing of Ruminants and Pigs (ZTHT Tänikon, Switzerland).
The collaboration with Dr. Pascal Savary (ZTHT Tänikon, Switzerland) led to a publication that compares dairy cows’ behavioural data obtained during milking using a 3D accelerometer attached to the milking cluster and direct observations.
The collaboration with Dr. Joan-Bryce Burla (ZTHT Tänikon, Switzerland) is still undergoing. We are investigating the use of Qualitative Behaviour Assessment by Swiss welfare inspectors to reliably measure the compatibility of group-housed horses.

I also investigated the valence and intensity of silent video stimuli of dogs and conspecifics (i.e. social stimuli) in sheep using three different methods: an approach-avoidance paradigm (AAP), an operant conditioning using video stimuli as reinforcers and an attention test. In the approach-avoidance test, animals’ behaviour (locomotion, exploratory behaviour and attention towards the screens) was recorded using a video camera. In the operant conditioning, sheep could switch on or off the video stimuli and the number of target touch was recorded and assessed as the motivation to see or avoid to see the stimuli. In the attention test, two silent video stimuli (presumed negative and positive) were played simultaneously and sheep attention towards the stimuli was recorded. To do so, I used an automated tracking system for the head and ear positions and movements (using infrared cameras) and a functional near-infrared spectroscopy sensor (fNIRS) to record frontal cortical brain activity. From these explorative experiments, I gained knowledge on understanding animal preferences and visual acuities. Statistical analyses were performed in R. The results from the approach–avoidance paradigm and attention test did not support the assumption that dog videos were more negative than sheep videos, though sheep reacted to the stimuli presented. However, the operant conditioning indicated that sheep were more prone to avoid silent videos of moving dogs. These results indicate that standard video images may not be ideal to represent valence characteristics of stimuli to sheep. The different parts of this work were presented at several conferences.

I additionally studied sheep attention biases towards acoustic stimuli, first by validating that attention could be measure in two groups of sheep (i.e. habituated to tested and naïve sheep). An ethogram was developed to determine sheep attention and side of attention, and sheep number of vocalisations was recorded. Then, negative and positive mood states were experimentally induced in sheep using environmental changes. Sheep were tested for their attention pre and post mood induction in a so-called attention bias test (ABT). Results shows that mood leads to attention biases, and especially, that negative mood drives more attention towards negative stimuli. Besides, sheep that were habituated to be tested vocalised less than naïve sheep, but the mood induction had only a weak effect on the number of vocalisation during the test.

I supervised a student who first trained sheep to touch a target for a food reward and then investigated the valence of dog and sheep acoustic stimuli in sheep using an operant conditioning paradigm. However, the inconsistent results obtained from the operant conditioning did not permit to draw any conclusion.

During this research period, I additionally assisted my supervisor in his research in red deer, mentored students to take blood samples and do hoof trimming in sheep, helped other PhD students on their projects (e.g. foetus sheep brain collection), and participated in ewes' laparoscopic artificial inseminations.

I did my Master thesis at the Institut de l’élevage in Paris with Brigitte Frappat, conducting a qualitative study in dairy cattle farms to understand the motivations and obstacles to reduce the use of antibiotics and to implement practice changes during the dry-off period. This project was part of the 2017 Ecoantibio national plan that encourages to rethink the use of antibiotics in animal production, particularly because of the risk of antimicrobial resistance development. As a starting point of this multidisciplinary project, I conducted semi-structured interviews in Brittany with eight conventional farms and their stakeholders. This qualitative study showed that farmers were well aware of the issues related to the antibiotics' consumption, but they did not see how they could reduce it without taking risks. Additionally, if their vets and advisors were generally motor to change towards less antibiotics use, they sometimes had not enough information or support from their organisations to do so.