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Introducing the Mellorater—The Five Domains Model in a Welfare Monitoring App for Animal Guardians
by
, , , ,
Cristina L. Wilkins
1,*
,
Paul D. McGreevy
2,
Suzanne M. Cosh
3,
Cathrynne Henshall
4,
Bidda Jones
2,5,
Amy D. Lykins
3 and
William Billingsley
6 1
School of Environmental and Rural Science, University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2353, Australia
2
Sydney School of Veterinary Science, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
3
School of Psychology, The University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2353, Australia
4
School of Agricultural, Environmental and Veterinary Sciences, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, NSW 2678, Australia
5
Australian Alliance for Animals, 16 Goodhope Street, Paddington, NSW 2021, Australia
6
School of Science and Technology, University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2353, Australia
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Animals 2024, 14(15), 2172; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani14152172 (registering DOI)
Submission received: 3 July 2024
/
Revised: 23 July 2024
/
Accepted: 24 July 2024
/
Published: 25 July 2024
(This article belongs to the Section Animal Welfare)
Simple Summary
This article introduces an animal welfare monitoring app based on the 2020 Five Domains Model that considers how an animal’s nutrition, environment, health, and behavioural interactions, influence their mental state. Adapted for smartphone use, the Mellorater app allows animal guardians (carers, keepers, and owners) to record structured observations of an animal’s life-world with a free research-backed tool. The aim is to help them monitor and improve their animal’s daily lived experiences, make better management decisions, and achieve a good life for their animals. Completing the checklist does not require specialist training and a user-guide with step-by-step instructions on using the app is provided. Users respond to 18 statements by noting their level of agreement with each statement, using a five-point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The authors acknowledge that this form of self-reporting has some limitations but propose that these may be outweighed by the benefits of structured monitoring being repeated over time. This approach helps to identify ongoing shortfalls in an animal’s life-world and trends in their observed quality of life indicators. Both of these outcomes may stimulate contact with sources of further advice, including veterinarians and other animal health and welfare professionals.
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.
