Pair housing makes calves more optimistic

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00027014%3A_____%2F19%3AN0000258" target="_blank" >RIV/00027014:_____/19:N0000258 - isvavai.cz</a>

Alternative codes found

RIV/60460709:41210/19:80391

Result on the web

<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-56798-w.pdf" target="_blank" >https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-56798-w.pdf</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-56798-w" target="_blank" >10.1038/s41598-019-56798-w</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Pair housing makes calves more optimistic

Original language description

Individual housing of dairy calves is common farm practice, but has negative effects on calf welfare. A compromise between practice and welfare may be housing calves in pairs. We compared learning performances and affective states as assessed in a judgement bias task of individually housed and pair-housed calves. Twenty-two calves from each housing treatment were trained on a spatial Go/No-go task with active trial initiation to discriminate between the location of a teat-bucket signalling either reward (positive location) or non-reward (negative location). We compared the number of trials to learn the operant task (OT) for the trial initiation and to finish the subsequent discrimination task (DT). Ten pair-housed and ten individually housed calves were then tested for their responses to ambiguous stimuli positioned in-between the positive and negative locations. Housing did not affect learning speed (OT: F1,34 = 0.42, P = 0.52; DT: F1,34 = 0.25, P = 0.62), but pair-housed calves responded more positively to ambiguous cues than individually housed calves (χ21 = 6.76, P = 0.009), indicating more positive affective states. This is the first study to demonstrate that pair housing improves the affective aspect of calf welfare when compared to individual housing.

Czech name

—

Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

40201 - Animal and dairy science; (Animal biotechnology to be 4.4)

Project

—

Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2019

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Scientific Reports 

ISSN

2045-2322

e-ISSN

—

Volume of the periodical

9

Issue of the periodical within the volume

December

Country of publishing house

GB - UNITED KINGDOM

Number of pages

9

Pages from-to

Article Nr.20246

UT code for WoS article

000509351600008

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85077341879