Animal behaviour & welfare

Our featured animal behaviour and welfare work:

TailTech

TailTech used a machine vision system with 3D cameras to measure pig tail angle in order to establish whether pig tail posture was an indicator of tail biting or general overall welfare. 

Learn more about TailTech

TechCare

SRUC worked as part of a consortium in Europe to integrate innovative technologies along the value chain to improve small ruminant welfare management. Known as TechCare, the project considered a precision livestock farming approach to welfare in small ruminant animals, such as sheep and goats, so that feed, health care or other aspects linked to animal welfare could be individualised to the animal rather than the herd as a whole. The result was significant welfare and production efficiency advantages.

Visit the TechCare website to learn more

GreenShed

Greenshed is SRUC’s technologically-innovative circular farming system that uses cattle waste products to power a methane capturing system and grow indoor crops. It was specifically designed to retrofit on current cattle sheds in order to make the system economically viable to farmers as well as cause little to no disruption to animal routines. 

Learn more about GreenShed

Dairy Nexus

A multi-million pound facility designed to facilitate collaboration between researchers, advisors, farmers, and businesses in the dairy sector to identify and solve real-world problems and take opportunities to improve productivity and sustainability.

Learn more about Dairy Nexus

Pneumonitor

Pneumonitor is a full-scale, commercial sensor that’s helping dairy farmers prevent pneumonia in calves by measuring real-time temperature, humidity, pressure, gusts, and relative volatile organic compounds (VOCs) data - all at calf height within the pen so that farmers get the valuable preventative insight they need before illness can take hold.

Learn more about Pneumonitor

Qualitative Behavioural Assessment App

The Qualitative Behavioural Assessment (QBA) App, is a first-of-its-kind, award-winning animal welfare app developed by SRUC professor Francoise Wemelsfelder specifically created for the purpose of measuring the emotional welfare of farmed animals and fish. 

The QBA app, based on SRUC's novel animal behaviour assessment approach, challenges conventional assumptions that animal emotions can only be determined by its actions, i.e. what it's doing. Instead, SRUC animal behaviour and welfare researchers found that animal emotions can be determined by how an animal moves and allows users to compare animal or herd scores to reference cohorts and track their welfare over time. 

Learn more about the Qualitative Behavioural Assessment (QBA) App

Mothers Matter

Our work on the importance of managing the pregnant female has led to a campaign to encourage producers to consider the impact of management in pregnancy on maternal stress and offspring outcomes. Over the last two decades there has been considerable research, at SRUC and elsewhere, investigating how stress, ill health, sub optimal nutrition, environment and husbandry conditions can affect livestock species and their offspring.

Prenatal effects have been studied in sheep, pigs, cattle, poultry and farmed fish. Prenatal effects can be a hidden risk factor for many farm health and welfare outcomes, and a possible cause of poor performance in replacement animals.

SRUC started the ‘Mothers Matter’ campaign to draw attention to these issues and explain what the risks are.

Beef: Managing cows during pregnancy – leaflet
Sheep : Managing ewes during pregnancy – leaflet

International Centre for Animal Welfare Science (ICAWS)

Formed in 2026, SRUC's International Centre for Animal Welfare Science (ICAWS) seeks to improve animal welfare through partnerships, programmes, and collaborative knowledge exchange with global veterinary schools and agricultural universities.

Learn more about the International Centre for Animal Welfare Science

Animal behaviour and welfare research outputs