The behavioural responses of yearling dairy heifers to different climatic demands during the winter were studied. Two groups were housed in two similar enclosures with trees, ley and pasture. A lying area, a heated water source, and feed bunk (free access to grass silage) were provided. The behaviour and location of each animal was recorded throughout the entire winter. Outdoor temperature, wind speed and solar radiation were also measured throughout the study. A heated animal model was used to measure the climatic energy demand. All the main activities and location of the heifers was significantly affected by the climate. Heifers spent more time in the lying area (with greater lying and ruminating) and less time eating and grazing, when there was a higher climatic energy demand. Increasing climatic energy demands also corresponded to greater migrations to the forested area as opposed to remaining in the open areas. Dairy heifers are able to adapt to increasing climatic demands by changing their behaviour. They are able to change their location and change their behaviour to reduce energy expenditure. If provided with wind breaks and dry lying areas, dairy heifers can adapt to cold climates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The behavioural responses of yearling dairy heifers to different climatic demands during the winter were studied. Two groups were housed in two similar enclosures with trees, ley and pasture. A lying area, a heated water source, and feed bunk (free access to grass silage) were provided. The behaviour and location of each animal was recorded […]<\/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":[4685,2983,8882,640,13816,23390,45,27278,6904,46,7864,20007,269,1675,8410,10859,12355,4264,20911,99,69,3034],"class_list":["post-5109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-welfare","tag-access","tag-activitybehaviourbos-taurusclimatedairy-cattledairy-heiferenergygroupheiferslyingresponsetemperaturewinter-climate","tag-al","tag-animal","tag-ass","tag-behavioural-responses","tag-dairy","tag-energy","tag-fee","tag-feed","tag-free-access","tag-gh","tag-heat","tag-location","tag-lying-area","tag-nat","tag-open-pasture-closed-confinement","tag-outdoor","tag-t","tag-temperature","tag-water","tag-winter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5109","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=5109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}