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(Accepted for publication 8 September 2011)

BOOK REVIEWavj_902 135..140

Farm animal behaviour: characteristics for assessment of health and welfare. Edited by I Ekesbo. CABI Publishing,Wallingsford, distributed in Australia by Inbooks, 2011. 238 pages. Price A$70.00. ISBN 978 1 84593 770 6.

A s the management of animal welfare has increased in impor-tance for society, we have seen an increasing number ofscientific texts on animal welfare and related issues. One of

latest is this single-author text, which aims to describe the keybehavioural characteristics of farmed animals and link these behav-iours to the animals’ health and welfare needs. Professor Ekesbo is aveterinarian who, since achieving his PhD in 1966, has dedicated hiscareer to furthering knowledge of animal husbandry and manage-ment, often using an ethological (behavioural) approach.

The book aims to assist veterinarians, and others working withfarmed animals, to build their ethological knowledge as an aid fordiagnosis and to assist with animal welfare assessment. On-farmanimal welfare assessment is becoming an increasing part offood quality assurance schemes in a number of countries, parti-cularly in Europe. The text has three main sections coveringdomesticated mammals (horses, pigs, rabbits, cattle, sheep andgoats), domesticated birds (chickens, turkeys, geese and ducks) and‘non-domesticated’ farmed animals (deer and ratites). Within eachspecies, a set of common headings are used to describe behaviourin a consistent manner, including social behaviour, alarm responses,feeding and reproductive behaviours. There are also subsections onactivity patterns, sensory acuity, considerations of normal physi-ological values for body temperature and heart rate, the appear-ance of the healthy and unhealthy animal and common welfareproblems. Each chapter is illustrated with black and white photo-graphs of key characteristics of the relevant species and its beha-viour, although there are few diagrams, charts or tables. There isalso a glossary, index and a comprehensive reference list.

The single-author textbook is becoming rarer, and with it thefeeling of gaining a sense of the personality and wisdom ofthe writer – something that is to be enjoyed with this book. On theother hand, single-author texts depend on rigorous reading andediting by others and there are a number of areas where this bookwould have benefited from more input. In some instances, the pho-tographs, particularly in black and white, are not very illustrative ofthe characteristic in question, and there are instances of repeatedtext between sections. There are also a number of ‘Northern Hemi-spherisms’ that could be confusing, such as the repeated descrip-tion of the timing of deer velvet development, shedding andmating behaviour in terms of months of the year and SouthernHemisphere readers will need to continually correct by six months.The sections on behavioural description work very well, whereasthe sections on health and welfare are brief and can be somewhatrepetitive between species.

Overall, this book provides an interesting viewpoint and ethologi-cal description of farmed mammal and bird species. For the personwanting a ready reference to look up the normal behaviour of arange of farmed species from ratites to rabbits, this book would bea valuable addition to have on the shelf, but it may be less useful forthe general veterinary reader.

Andrew Fisher

doi: 10.1111/j.1751-0813.2012.00902.x

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