The decision to perform euthanasia in geriatric zoo mammals is usually a highly complex procedure involving ethical, medical, emotional and sometimes political factors. However, subsequent necropsies show that the pathological changes of organs and/or the musculoskeletal system are often already advanced. Therefore, we hypothesise that euthanasia is often delayed to the detriment of the animal's welfare. The purpose of this study was to facilitate and establish an initial, objective, decision-making framework for the euthanasia of geriatric zoo mammals. A scoring-system to assess the physical condition and quality of life in ageing zoo mammals is presented, based on retrospective and prospective investigation of 70 geriatric zoo mammals in five European zoos. Medical records and necropsy reports were studied in retrospective cases. Symptoms were monitored and recorded in prospective cases. Radiographic investigations under general anesthesia or at necropsy were performed additionally. A significant association between symptoms and pathological findings revealed that 36.9% (n = 24/65) of examined animals (n = 41/65) had pathological alterations to the musculoskeletal system and 26.2% (n = 17/65) suffered from neoplasia. Based on the individual reports, 28 veterinarians from different fields of veterinary medicine concluded that these animals had mild to severe pain, discomfort and a significantly reduced quality of life, thus strongly reducing welfare. The proposed scoring system includes all of these factors and offers a simple and reliable tool to support decision-making for euthanasia in geriatric zoo mammals.

The impact of behavioural disorders on animal welfare in modern animal husbandry has been much debated. While other abnormal behaviours have been explored at length, there are a paucity of studies on tail-biting in rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus). In the present study, severe tail lesions were observed in group-reared rabbit does on a commercial rabbit farm. In the subsequent investigations, the occurrence of tail lesions in 219 rabbit does from nine batches was compared between group- or singlehousing and a scoring system recording the severity of tail lesions was developed and verified. This five-grade scoring system was applied to evaluate the progression of prevalence and severity of tail lesions in 21 groups during rearing in two batches. The results revealed a significant difference in the score level between housing types with a higher prevalence of injured tails in group- (60.4%) compared to single-reared (4.0%) does. An increase in severity and frequency of tail lesions was observed in groups during the course of a rearing period. Furthermore, the established scoring system was characterised by adequate observer reliability. Overall, tail injuries occurred on a regular basis in the investigated rearing groups, indicating tail-biting to be a prevalent problem. This could be considered relevant in terms of animal welfare, both for the animal doing the biting and the individual being bitten. The findings draw attention to an inadequately described problem in rabbit husbandry. However, the search for preventive measures needs to scrutinise the role of single-housing, without failing to consider the gregarious nature of rabbits.

Several established models in human and veterinary medicine exist to evaluate an individual health or disease status. Many of these seem unsuitable for further epidemiological research aimed at discovering underlying influential factors. As a case example for score development and choice, the present study analyses different approaches to scoring the foot health of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) living in European facilities. Sum scores with varying degree of detail, and without or with a weighting method, were compared using descriptive statistics, ie kurtosis, skewness, Shannon entropy, total redundancy, their maximum and their actual ranges. With increasing score complexity, a higher level of differentiation was reached. In parallel, the distribution of score frequencies in the population shifted systematically: with the least complex scoring model the pattern indicated a severely unhealthy population with an opposite skew to a hypothetically healthy population, whereas the most complex scoring model indicated a mildly affected population with a skew corresponding to that expected for a healthy population. We propose the latter, in the form of the Particularised Severity Score (ParSev), which accounts for every nail and pad individually and weights the sub-scores by squaring, as the most relevant score for further investigations, either in assessing changes within an elephant population over time, or correlating foot health in epidemiological studies to potentially influencing factors. Our results emphasise the relevance of choosing appropriate scoring models for welfare-associated evaluations, due to implications for the applicability as well as the perceived welfare status of the test population.

Most of the existing prediction models for COVID-19 lack validation, are inadequately reported or are at high risk of bias, a reason which has led to discourage their use. Few existing models have the potential to be extensively used by healthcare providers in low-resource settings since many require laboratory and imaging predictors. Therefore, we sought to develop and validate a multivariable prediction model of death in Mexican patients with COVID-19, by using demographic and patient history predictors. We conducted a national retrospective cohort study in two different sets of patients from the Mexican COVID-19 Epidemiologic Surveillance Study. Patients with a positive reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction for SARS-CoV-2 and complete unduplicated data were eligible. In total, 83 779 patients were included to develop the scoring system through a multivariable Cox regression model; 100 000, to validate the model. Eight predictors (age, sex, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunosuppression, hypertension, obesity and chronic kidney disease) were included in the scoring system called PH-Covid19 (range of values: −2 to 25 points). The predictive model has a discrimination of death of 0.8 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.796–0.804). The PH-Covid19 scoring system was developed and validated in Mexican patients to aid clinicians to stratify patients with COVID-19 at risk of fatal outcomes, allowing for better and efficient use of resources.

Respiratory disease of young dairy calves is a significant cause of morbidity, mortality, economic loss, and animal welfare concern but there is no gold standard diagnostic test for antemortem diagnosis. Clinical signs typically used to make a diagnosis of respiratory disease of calves are fever, cough, ocular or nasal discharge, abnormal breathing, and auscultation of abnormal lung sounds. Unfortunately, routine screening of calves for respiratory disease on the farm is rarely performed and until more comprehensive, practical and affordable respiratory disease-screening tools such as accelerometers, pedometers, appetite monitors, feed consumption detection systems, remote temperature recording devices, radiant heat detectors, electronic stethoscopes, and thoracic ultrasound are validated, timely diagnosis of respiratory disease can be facilitated using a standardized scoring system. We have developed a scoring system that attributes severity scores to each of four clinical parameters; rectal temperature, cough, nasal discharge, ocular discharge or ear position. A total respiratory score of five points or higher (provided that at least two abnormal parameters are observed) can be used to distinguish affected from unaffected calves. This can be applied as a screening tool twice-weekly to identify pre-weaned calves with respiratory disease thereby facilitating early detection. Coupled with effective treatment protocols, this scoring system will reduce post-weaning pneumonia, chronic pneumonia, and otitis media.

In the context of assessing the impact of management and environmental factors on animal health, behaviour or performance it has become increasingly important to conduct (epidemiological) studies in the field. Hence, the number of investigated farms per study is considerably high so that numerous observers are needed for investigation. In order to maintain the quality and validity of study results calibration meetings where observers are trained and the current level of agreement is assessed have to be conducted to minimise the observer effect. When study animals were rated independently by the same observers by a categorical variable the exclusion test can be performed to identify disagreeing observers. This statistical test compares for each variable and each observer the observer-specific agreement with the overall agreement among all observers based on kappa coefficients. It accounts for two major challenges, namely the absence of a gold-standard observer and different data type comprising ordinal, nominal and binary data. The presented methods are applied on a reliability study to assess the agreement among eight observers rating welfare parameters of laying hens. The degree to which the observers agreed depended on the investigated item (global weighted kappa coefficients: 0.37 to 0.94). The proposed method and graphical description served to assess the direction and degree to which an observer deviates from the others. It is suggested to further improve studies with numerous observers by conducting calibration meetings and accounting for observer bias.

Background: There is a strong demand for screening instruments for mild cognitive impairment (MCI), as a pre-stage of dementia. The clock drawing test (CDT) is widely used to screen for dementia, but the utility in screening for MCI remains uncertain. In particular, it is still questionable which scoring system is the best in order to screen for MCI. We therefore aimed to compare the utility of different CDT scoring systems for screening for MCI.

Methods: In a sample of 428 subjects of the Leipzig Longitudinal Study of the Aged (LEILA 75+) study, CDT scores of different scoring systems were compared between subjects with and without MCI. Comparison of receiver operating characteristic (ROC; area under the curve, sensitivity, specificity) was performed and inter-rater reliability was calculated.

Results: The CDT scores differed significantly between MCI and non-MCI subjects according to all scoring systems applied. However, ROC of the CDT scores was not adequate.

Conclusions: None of the present CDT scoring systems has sufficient utility to screen reliably for MCI. The clinical value of the CDT could be improved by using semi-quantitative scoring, having a wider score range and focusing on specific details of the clock (e.g. the hands and numbers).

Lamb mortality remains a significant welfare and economic issue for sheep production. Lamb survival is to a degree dependent upon an easy delivery and the expression of appropriate behaviours from both mother and offspring, such as rapid standing, udder seeking and sucking by the lamb. Genetic solutions have the potential to improve birth assistance and lamb behaviour but large amounts of data are needed. Therefore, to achieve this objective, simple, proxy methods (scoring systems) were developed to quantify the level of birth difficulties and lamb vigour on farm. In the first study, detailed historical behavioural data from 1156 lambs (Scottish Blackface and Suffolk (S)) were analysed to develop criteria for 3 scores: birth assistance, lamb vigour and sucking assistance. The birth assistance score was developed by analysing the relationships between birth presentation and intervention levels, and intervention level and labour length. Lambs with abnormal birth positions required more assistance than normally presented lambs and lambs with long labours required more and greater assistance than those with short labours. Lamb vigour score was developed by analysing the latencies for the lamb to first perform specific behaviours; more vigorous lambs reach landmark behaviours faster than low vigour lambs. The sucking assistance score was developed from the relationship between the latency to suck successfully and assistance level, where lambs that were slow to suck required more assistance than lambs that were quick to suck. In the second study, the behaviour scoring systems (5-point categorical scales) were validated using a commercial flock of 80 twin-bearing crossbred ewes mated with either Texel (T) or S sires by simultaneously recording scores and the latency to perform specific landmark behaviours (i.e. to stand, seek the udder and suck). The vigour scores (recorded at 5 min of age) were compared with the latency from birth to standing and showed that lambs with lower (better) vigour scores were faster to stand after birth than those with higher scores. The sucking assistance scores were compared with the latency from birth to sucking, and showed that lambs with lower sucking assistance scores are quicker to suck than those with high scores. These results showed that the scoring systems could provide a practical and reliable assessment of birth assistance and lamb behaviour on farm and were sufficiently sensitive to discriminate vigour levels between lambs sired by either S or T rams.