Effect of the presence of apple trees on the behaviour of growing rabbits raised outdoors
2024
Genin, Morgane | Génétique Physiologie et Systèmes d'Elevage (GenPhySE) ; Ecole Nationale Vétérinaire de Toulouse (ENVT) ; Institut National Polytechnique (Toulouse) (Toulouse INP) ; Université de Toulouse (UT)-Université de Toulouse (UT)-Institut National Polytechnique (Toulouse) (Toulouse INP) ; Université de Toulouse (UT)-Université de Toulouse (UT)-École nationale supérieure agronomique de Toulouse (ENSAT) ; Institut National Polytechnique (Toulouse) (Toulouse INP) ; Université de Toulouse (UT)-Université de Toulouse (UT)-Ecole d'Ingénieurs de Purpan (INP - PURPAN) ; Institut National Polytechnique (Toulouse) (Toulouse INP) ; Université de Toulouse (UT)-Université de Toulouse (UT)-Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE) | AgroParisTech | Valérie fillon | Avelyne Villain
Master
Mostrar más [+] Menos [-]Inglés. In France, 90% of rabbits are raised in buildings in wire cages. These living conditions impact their welfare and therefore are criticized by citizens. One of the alternative systems studied aimed to develop an agroecological system breeding young rabbits outdoor in an apple orchard. We were interested in the effect of trees on the rabbits’ behaviours with the hypothesis that trees could enrich the environment and secure rabbits. We therefore compared the behaviour of rabbits raised in mobile pens of 18m2 in an apple orchard or in a grassland. We have implemented a spatial dispersion analysis, created a behavioural repertoire and compared their occurrences and the rabbits’ time budgets, in both modalities. Our analyses showed that the presence of trees tend to increase space occupancy by rabbits. Behavioural analyses demonstrated the expression of a large behaviour’s repertoire (N = 44 observable behaviours) in both modalities. However, some behaviours are differentially expressed in the two modalities. Indeed, we observe higher number of occurrences of resting and exploration behaviours in apple orchard. We also observed higher number of fleeing behaviours and a higher time budget of expression of alert behaviours in grassland compared to apple orchard. In future studies, quantification of the levels of expression of behaviours could allow us to refine our understanding of the effect of trees. So far, we can already affirm that presence of trees allows enrichment (diversity of expressed species-specific behaviours) and security (lower expression of vigilance) of rabbit’s environment and thus contribute to rabbit’s welfare.
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