Effects Of Artificial Mothering On The Behavior And Welfare Of Dairy Calves

Due to early cow-calf separation in modern farms,maternal care,such as licking,grooming,stand assisting,and capable of natural sucking,is greatly limited for newborn calves.Early cow-calf separation management could induce various negative physical and psychological effects and resulting impaired welfare condition for dairy calves.Physically imitating the maternal licking with manual brushing(similar as a massage operation),termed artificial mothering(AM),during an early age might substitute the role of cows,and play a beneficial effect on the well-being of dairy calves.The first trial investigated the effect of mimicking maternal licking by manually brushing on the behavior and welfare of Holstein female dairy calves right after they were born and during their first week of life.We randomly selected 33 newborn Holstein female dairy calves with a similar body weight.Right after birth,all calves were removed from their dams and placed in individual pens for the whole experimental period.The calves were divided into two groups,one group is the control group(HD,n=16).The HD calves were vigorously dried within 1-2 min by towel and left alone.Besides vigorously drying,the HDAM(n=17)calves were licking mimicked by brush grooming for 30 min after born(day 0).In addition,for the HDAM calves,5 min of grooming were conducted 1 to 2 h after morning(8:30)and noon(14:30)milk feeding from day 1 to 6.On day 7,open field(OFT,5 min)and novel human(NHT,5 min)tests were conducted 1 h after morning milk feeding for all calves.On days 4 and 6,focal sampling was performed during the evening milk feeding(20:30)as well as the 10 min before and after that.Focal sampling was also conducted during the OFT and NHT to record the duration and bouts of different behavior.One-zero sampling was used to check the percentage of calves ingesting starter on day 6.The results show that the HDAM calves were observed to be more active and perform more oral behavior compared with the HD calves around evening milk feeding.In the OFT and NHT,the HDAM calves were more active(walking and jump-running behavior)and exhibited more human interactions than the HD calves.There tended to be a higher percentage of HDAM calves ingesting starter on day 6.The second trial investigated the effect of mimicking maternal licking by manually brushing on the behavior and welfare of Jersey female dairy calves right after they were born and during their first week of life.Thirteen newborn Jersey female calves with similar body weight were selected and divided into two groups The exact same experiment as the Holstein calves was carried out with the groups namely Jersey Control(J,n=6)and Jersey Artificial Mothering(JAM,n=7).The results show that artificial mothering resulted the Jersey calves spending more time on jump-running behavior after evening milk feeding.In the OFT,the JAM calves had a tendency of more jump-running and object sniffing duration than the J calves.No difference in the behavior of J and JAM calves was observed in the NHT.We also found that there was a higher percentage of JAM calves ingesting starter on day 6.In conclusion,artificial mothering during early life could boost the activity,human affinity and starter diet ingestion of dairy calves.There is a little difference in terms of the effect of artificial mothering during early life on the Holstein and Jersey female calves.This might due to the temperature variation between different breeds,it might also be the difference in the number of experimental animals we choose.In the following studies in the future,increased number of animals and more detailed and long-term behavioral study should be investigated.As we see the positive impact of mimicking maternal licking by manually brushing on dairy calves,it is expected that the operation of artificial mothering will be mechanized and intelligentized through artificial intelligence technology in the future,and ultimately achieve the goal of improving the welfare of diary calves.