THE RELATIVE AVERSIVENESS TO FARMED RED DEER OF TRANSPORT, PHYSICAL RESTRAINT, HUMAN PROXIMITY AND SOCIAL-ISOLATION

Thirty farmed red deer (yearling hinds) were individually moved along a raceway and subjected to one of the following five treatments: indiv idual transport, physical restraint in a crush, human proximity, visua l isolation or a 'free run' (control) (n = 6). Each deer was tested tw ice per day on five successive days, and the degree of aversion shown to the location where the treatments were imposed was measured by the latency to enter the race and the time taken to move along the raceway . There was a significant trial number x treatment interaction (P < 0. 001) for the latency to enter the raceway. The control deer were the q uickest to enter the raceway throughout the experiment, and latencies for deer subjected to the other four treatments all increased over the first half of the experiment. Thereafter, the latencies to enter the raceway for deer exposed to transport, human proximity and visual isol ation remained relatively constant, while those for deer restrained in the crush continued to increase. When the data far the final three tr ials were pooled, control deer entered the raceway significantly quick er (mean = 1.4 s) than those which were restrained in the crush (mean = 9.5 s; P < 0.001) and those which were transported (mean = 5.2 s; P < 0.05) although there was no significant treatment effect on the time taken to move along the raceway. It is concluded that restraint and t ransport were the most aversive treatments imposed on the deer, and th at latency to enter a raceway may provide a more sensitive measure of the degree of aversiveness experienced by deer than the time taken to move along a raceway. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.