The relationship between humans and animals can have a substantial effect on the behaviour, productivity and welfare of livestock. The nature and timing of interactions with humans as well as the genetic predisposition of individuals are key factors in determining the relationship, which develops between humans and farm animals. This study aimed to determine if a period exists within the first 2 weeks after birth during which positive contact with humans alter young calves subsequent behaviour. The effects of handling at different times after birth on the subsequent response to humans was investigate using 40 Danish Friesian calves removed from their dams immediately after birth. Treatments were feeding and handling during days 1-4 after birth (H1-4), during days 6-9 (H6-9), or during days 11-14 (H11-14), and no handling (C: control). The handling treatment was carried out three times daily for 4 days and consisted of 6 minute of hand-feeding with milk from a teat-bucket and patting, stroking and talking to the calf. All calves were housed in single pens and the human contact was minimized except during the treatment periods. The approach behaviour of each calf to an unknown person was tested at days 20, 40 and 55 in their home pen. Latency to interact with person was shorter for calves in H1-4 compared to C. There was no difference in latency to interact with person between H11-14 and control calves. The group H6-9 differed only from the control group at day 20. Treatment also affected the position and the orientation of the calf in the pen during tests. Calves in H1-4 stood at the front of the pen and faced the person more often than calves in C. All the three handled treatments (H1-4, H6-9, and H11-14) had a shorter flight distance at day 55 compared to the control group. The results of this study indicate that handling and hand-feeding, especially during the first 4 days after birth, increases the motivation of young calves to approach a human compared with calves that receive minimal human contact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The relationship between humans and animals can have a substantial effect on the behaviour, productivity and welfare of livestock. The nature and timing of interactions with humans as well as the genetic predisposition of individuals are key factors in determining the relationship, which develops between humans and farm animals. This study aimed to determine if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[928],"tags":[8882,640,2968,2863,9290,9628,18570,6904,46,108,3804,20007,112,5381,7258,10859,17743,20890,20911,4874,1579,20620,26223,52,27281],"class_list":["post-5094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-welfare","tag-al","tag-animal","tag-behaviourcalfcalvesfeedinggrouphandlinghuman-animal-interactionsmotivationpredispositionproductivityresponsesensitive-periodswelfare","tag-birth","tag-carr","tag-contact","tag-danis","tag-fee","tag-feed","tag-feeding","tag-genetic","tag-gh","tag-handling","tag-light","tag-milk","tag-nat","tag-prod","tag-socialisation-between-calves-and-humans","tag-t","tag-tan","tag-test","tag-the-effect-of-early-handling-on-the-socialisation-of-young-calves-to-human","tag-the-effects","tag-treatment","tag-welfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5094\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}