Suitability of an infrared thermometer and a finger pulse oximeter to assess animal welfare in dairy goats.

Abstract

Body temperature, heart rate and respiratory rate are physiological parameters that provide information about the animal health and welfare. To date, body temperature is mostly assessed by recording rectal temperature. Similarly, heart and respiratory rates are commonly recording using a stethoscope. Recording these parameters requires animal handling which may stress the animal. In view of the importance of these physiological parameters, this study aims to validate non-invasive methods for measuring body temperature using an infrared thermometer and heart rate and respiratory rates using a human finger pulse oximeter. This study was carried out using 56 Majorera goats between the fifth and sixth month of lactation. The experiment was performed in the milking parlour immediately after milking. Infrared temperatures were recorded (i.e., mouth, base of the horn, anus, and udder insertion area) using an infrared thermometer and rectal temperature was recorded with a digital thermometer. Heart and respiratory rates were recorded using a stethoscope and a finger pulse oximeter placed in the teat. The Pearson correlation coefficient was determined using the PROC CORR of SAS 9.4 and the statistical significance was set as P ≤ 0.05. There was no correlation between mouth, horn and udder temperature and rectal temperature, except for anus temperature that was poorly correlated (r = 0.322; P = 0.016). There was a high correlation between pulse oximeter heart rate and stethoscope heart rate (r = 0.829; P < 0.001). In many occasions, the finger pulse oximeter was not able to record the respiratory rate and therefore, it was not possible to correlate it with the manual respiratory rate. In conclusion, this study demonstrates that a finger pulse oximeter is a suitable tool to record the heart rate in dairy goats. However, further studies need to be performed to find non-invasive methods to assess body temperature and respiratory rate in dairy goats.