Effects of routine handling in the husbandry of common eland

Ing. B.Sc. Abubakar Sadiq Musa

Doctoral thesis

Abstract:

In today's global wildlife enterprise, there lies a big opportunity for game farming, which is also gradually shifting to intensification. One crucial aspect that determines the success of intensification of large bovids such as common eland is the ability to tame, handle, and manipulate them with ease without compromising their welfare. It is in light of this that the present study evaluates possible ways and factors that would affect or improve the ease of handling, social interaction, and harmony of common eland in an intensive management system. These aspects are crucial as they impact overall animal welfare. Two research processes led to the entirety of the present study, the first being an evaluation of the effect of immunocastration in ameliorating agonistic behaviour, ease of handling as well as the effect thereon on the activity budget of two groups consisting of 30 mixed-sex growing common eland. Here, the hypothesis focused on the males, where half of the males were immunocastrated, and the rest and females served as control. The second study was a longitudinal study that generally investigated the effect of routine handling and social dominance on the blood biochemistry parameters of growing eland. Overall, immunocastration had no significant influence on most of the response variables, including activity budget, social behaviour, social rank, agonistic behaviour and temperament during handling. However, there were changes in activity between the pre- and post-vaccination periods, which were attributed to changes in the immunological response to immunocastration that were mild to cause a significant change. Likewise, there was a decrease in aggressive behaviour in the juvenile, which upholds the recommendation for this practice from an early age. The temperament was, however, not influenced by immunocastration, but it improved over time, highlighting the importance of routine handling in habituating such large, non-domestic bovids in an intensive management system. The blood health biochemistry parameters were not influenced by social rank. However, most of these parameters were influenced as a result of handling stress but were all within the reference range recommended by ZIMS. Thus, this study has paved the way, giving optimism to including common eland in domestic intensive game production. However, it has also opened a wide research gap for further exploring the effect of conventional domestic husbandry management techniques on the productivity and welfare of eland and other related antelopes.

Keywords

Domestication, Habituation, Immunocastration, Intensive management, Welfare

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 3. 3. 2024

Thesis defence

• Supervisor: doc. Francisco Ceacero Herrador, Ph.D.
• Reader: Jorge Cassinello Roldán, Bc., externi, Šárová Radka, externi, Matías Villagrán, externi

Czech University of Life Sciences Prague

Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences

Doctoral programme / field:
Agricultural Specialization / Tropical Agrobiology and Bioresource Management