Introducing the Mellorater—The Five Domains Model in a Welfare Monitoring App for Animal Guardians

Title
Introducing the Mellorater—The Five Domains Model in a Welfare Monitoring App for Animal Guardians
Publication Date
2024-08-01
Author(s)
Wilkins, Cristina L
McGreevy, Paul D
( author )
OrcID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7220-8378
Email: pmcgree2@une.edu.au
UNE Id une-id:pmcgree2
Cosh, Suzanne M
( author )
OrcID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8003-3704
Email: scosh@une.edu.au
UNE Id une-id:scosh
Henshall, Cathrynne
Jones, Bidda
Lykins, Amy D
( author )
OrcID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2930-3964
Email: alykins@une.edu.au
UNE Id une-id:alykins
Billingsley, William
( author )
OrcID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1720-9076
Email: wbilling@une.edu.au
UNE Id une-id:wbilling
Type of document
Journal Article
Language
en
Entity Type
Publication
Publisher
MDPI AG
Place of publication
Switzerland
DOI
10.3390/ani14152172
UNE publication id
une:1959.11/61823
Abstract

: When monitoring an animal’s welfare, it helps to have comprehensive and day-to-day information about the animal’s life. The goal is to ensure that animal guardians (carers, keepers, and owners) use such information to act in the animals’ best interests. This article introduces the Mellorater, an animal welfare monitoring app based on the 2020 Five Domains Model. This framework provides a means of capturing comprehensive information about the world in which individual animals exist. The Mellorater asks animal guardians to rate their agreement with 18 statements covering any focal animal’s nutrition, environment, health, and behavioural interactions using a five-point Likert scale. No specialist training is required other than following straightforward instructions on using the app, which are provided. The Mellorater is not proposed as a validated welfare auditing tool because it relies on reflective self-reporting and, thus, is vulnerable to the user’s subjectivity. If users’ subjectivity is stable over time, then the longitudinal data may be considered useful proxies for trends in quality of life. That said, it has the potential to be used by trained auditors if scientifically validated, species-specific indicators are applied. The Mellorater collects anonymous data and has been approved for a study to explore how the use of such scales may differ among guardians of different species and in different contexts. In this paper, we conduct the following: (1) summarise the app’s purposes; (2) clarify its capabilities and limitations; and (3) invite animal welfare scholars, veterinarians, health and welfare professionals, and animal guardians to use it.

Link
Citation
Animals, 14(15), p. 1-15
ISSN
2076-2615
Start page
1
End page
15
Rights
Attribution 4.0 International

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