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86
Poster 14
Tine Rousing Nielsen presents Poster 14 during the poster sessions in the Aula.
Session theme 1: Development, validation and automated measurements of indicators of animal welfare
TIME BUDGETS OF DAIRY COWS HOUSED IN SMALLER GROUPS
DURING THE FIRST 30 DAYS OF LACTATION
T.R. Nielsen, E. Burow, P.T. Thomsen, S. Østergaard
Department of Animal Health, Welfare and Nutrition, University of Aarhus, Tjele, Denmark
The first 30 days after calving dairy cows are to adjust to a very high milk production and are at
increased risk of health problems.
In the context of animal welfare it is hypothesised that early lactating dairy cows in big loose
housing systems will benefit from separation from the rest of the herd by housing in so-called
'attention’ groups. One aspect of this hypothesis is that ‘attention group’ housed cows may show
less strained resting time budgets and less idle standing.
One ‘attention’ group was established in every one of 3 Danish dairy farms with loose housing
cubicle systems. Further farm characteristic: 125 to 185 Danish Holsteins and milking in parlours.
Immediately after calving cows were distributed to either 30 days’ housing in ‘attention’ group or
housing for the rest of the lactation in control group (normal housing procedures) by systematic
random sampling. The average group size of the ‘attention groups’ varied from 7.7 to 11.8 between
farms. For the control group the average group size varied from 49.0 to 187.2 animals. During the
summer of 2007 a total of 94 animals (48 attention housed and 46 control housed cows) were
observed using direct and manual point sampling with 8 sessions of 24 hours divided into 10-min
sample points.
Preliminary results (where proportion of sampling points are converted into proportion of time
spent) shows that for a 24 hour period attention group housed cows on average tended to rest more
(9.7 vs. 9.0 hours, p=0.13), tended to stand more in cubicles (6.3 vs. 5.6 hours, p=0.09), and stood
less idling (1.9 vs. 2.5 hours, p=0.04) than the control cows.
Results support partially that dairy cows in early lactation will benefit from housing in smaller
groups with better access to resources.
Contact information: Tine Rousing Nielsen or email tine.rousingnielsen@agrsci.dk
Complete address: University of Aarhus, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, Dept. of Animal Health,
Welfare and Nutrition, P.O. Box 50, DK- 8830 Tjele, Denmark
Species: Dairy cattle