Effects of individual or combined housing systems on behavioural and growth responses of dairy calves
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Dosyalar
Tarih
2007
Yazarlar
Dergi Başlığı
Dergi ISSN
Cilt Başlığı
Yayıncı
Taylor & Francis As
Erişim Hakkı
info:eu-repo/semantics/closedAccess
Özet
This study was carried out to investigate the effects of individual versus combined housing systems on behavioural and growth responses of dairy calves in order to test the hypothesis that when calves were kept in early age individually and later in groups, they would increase growth performance and social behaviours. Twenty-four Holstein Friesian calves were allocated to two different housing systems. After three days of colostrum feeding, individually housed (IH) calves were kept in pens (1 m x 1.5 m) for 60 days while combined housed ( CH) calves were kept in group pens (3 m x 3 m) for 30 days after individual housing during the period of 4-33 days. Each calf was monitored twice a week for a period of 1 h starting at 08.00, 10.00, 12.00, 18.00, 20.00 and 22.00 h at 10-min intervals. Behavioural activities were playing, walking, licking objects, idle standing, lying, restlessness, grooming and tongue playing. Calves' live weights, body measurements and feed intakes were determined on a weekly basis. The results were: 1) combined housing calves increased their calf starter intake (37.35 +/- 1.24 kg vs. 23.39 +/- 0.86 kg; p<0.001), alfalfa hay intake (8.76 +/- 0.35 kg vs. 7.14 +/- 0.43 kg; p<0.05) and total feed intake (46.11 +/- 91.04 kg vs. 30.53 +/- 0.86 kg; p<0.001) compared to individual housed calves; 2) combined housing increased the proportional events of playing (12.80 vs. 2.86%), walking (19.14 vs. 3.81%) and grooming (8.06 vs. 4.60%), but decreased licking objects (1.03 vs. 2.94%), idle standing (20.73 vs. 36.29%), lying (30.19 vs. 39.53%) and restlessness (1.69 vs. 3.47%) compared to individual housing systems (p<0.001) without affecting tongue rolling (6.36 vs. 6.50%); 3) combined housing system increased body weight gain by about 2.36 kg and body length by about 1.48 cm per calf compared to those kept in individual pens (p<0.05). In conclusion, combined housing system provided calves more opportunity to show their walking, playing and grooming activities, reflecting increases in feed intake, body weight gain and length compared to individual housing system.
Açıklama
Anahtar Kelimeler
housing, individual, combined, dairy calf, behaviour, growth
Kaynak
Acta Agriculturae Scandinavica Section A-Animal Science
WoS Q Değeri
Q3
Scopus Q Değeri
Q2
Cilt
57
Sayı
2
