Cross-sucking, the sucking of various body parts of neighbouring calves, is a behavioural problem associated with calves being separated from their mothers early but still being fed milk. This study examined cross-suckling behaviour in calves feed by a typical open feeder stall with an artificial teat versus a modified feeder in which a gate closes behind the calf upon entry. The behaviours were recorded over a 9-week period. It was determined that calves that are provided protection (the gate closing behind them upon entry) would remain in the feeder from longer periods of time after they finished consuming their milk and during this time would suck of the teat even though it provided no milk. In the 15-minute period following milk ingestion, the calves fed via a feeder with a rear gate showed a decreased rate of cross suckling. The remainder of day (following the 15 min period immediately following feeding) there was not a difference in the rate of cross-sucking between the two different feeder groups. Even so by installing a gate that closes upon the calf’s entrance into the feeder, it successfully reduces cross suckling when it is most commonly seen, immediately following the completion of a meal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cross-sucking, the sucking of various body parts of neighbouring calves, is a behavioural problem associated with calves being separated from their mothers early but still being fed milk. This study examined cross-suckling behaviour in calves feed by a typical open feeder stall with an artificial teat versus a modified feeder in which a gate closes […]<\/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":[8882,13816,3001,23831,26213,16845,12232,26739,8627,15044,6904,46,1293,108,20007,7258,22808,16262,4599,13321,128,20911,6053,11902],"class_list":["post-5127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-welfare","tag-al","tag-ass","tag-behaviourcalfcalvescattlecross-suckingfeedinggroupgroup-housingmilknon-nutritive-suckingsuckingteat","tag-calf-cross-sucking","tag-calf-cross-suckling","tag-close","tag-cross-suckling","tag-cross-sucking","tag-cross-sucking-calves","tag-cross-suckling-calves","tag-fee","tag-feed","tag-feeder","tag-feeding","tag-gh","tag-milk","tag-pic","tag-pl","tag-stall","tag-suck-calf-publications","tag-suckling","tag-t","tag-use","tag-what-is-cross-suckling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5127","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=5127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}