How the introduction of a social facilitator cow before weaning affect calf behavior?

Abstract

The use of an experienced companion to alleviate calf-weaning distress is a form of social learning which stimulates the youngers to exploit new and different resources and provided social support. Our objective was to evaluate the effect of the introduction of a social facilitator cow (SF) on beef calf behavior before weaning. Forty-eight multiparous cows nursing calves (235.6 ± 13.6 kg BW; 224.7 ± 5.7 days old of age) were randomly allocated to one of two treatments (24 animals per treatment; 2 paddocks/treatment): absence (-) or presence (+) of SF. The SF was two non-pregnant multiparous cows and was introduced on the paddock seven days before remote physical separation. Using a direct individual instantaneous sampling of calves, nine mutually exclusive behaviors were recorded from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, at a 10-min fixed interval, on days -14 (basal) and -7 respect to weaning. Also, for 1-min period every 10 min, the occurrence of vocalization, abnormal behavior and/or self-groom was recorded. For the statistical analysis, MIXED or NPAR1WAY procedure were used depending on the data. Significance was defined as P < 0.05. The frequency of playing, drinking water, and suckling diminished from day -14 to day -7. Calves from +SF group showed lower percentage of walking, grooming and vocalizing behavior and a higher percentage of grazing behavior than -SF group. Calves from -SF group had a decrease in the percentage of ruminating behavior on the day of SF entry respect to baseline. The introduction of a social facilitator cow before weaning seems to not negatively affect the social and the feeding behavior of calves.