Individually housing calves impairs their attainment of social contact, which is believed to be an important need in cattle. The strength of the calves’ motivation to have social contact can be determined through operant conditioning. This study compared calves’ motivation for two types of social contact, the first being head to head contact through metals bars. The other form of social contact was full interaction between two calves without any restrictions. The six calves used in this study were taught initially to press a panel in the test pen and the reward they received was social contact with another calf for three minutes. Once the calf learnt that pushing the panel was associated with social contact the number of times the calf needed to push the panel was gradually increased for both types of social contact rewards. The behaviour of the calves during the social contact reward was continuously videotaped. The calves showed a stronger motivation and thus were willing to work harder to attain full social contact when compared to head contact. During the reward period the calves with full contact were involved in more social activities. The harder the calves had to work to attain full social contact also led to an increase in social activity during reward times as compared to reward periods in which they did not have to work as hard. Therefore, the calves demonstrated different motivations for different forms of social contact, in that calves are more willing to work harder for full social contact. The extent that the calves must work to attain the social contact may also impact the degree of social behaviours exhibited during the subsequent social encounters.