Social approach and place aversion in relation to conspecific pain in dairy calves

Graduate Student Literature Review: Sociability, fearfulness, and coping style-Impacts on individual variation in the social behavior of dairy cattle

Dairy cattle typically live in groups, but individuals within these groups vary in their social behavior. An improved understanding of factors affecting the expression of social behavior may help refine management practices on farms to better accommodate the needs of all individuals within the herd. In this paper, we review (1) some examples of how social behavior is expressed in cattle, (2) commonly assessed personality traits in this species (i.e., sociability and fearfulness) as well as coping style, and (3) how these can affect the expression of social behavior of dairy cattle and in turn their welfare. We also identify understudied social behaviors that personality might influence (social learning, social stress, and social buffering of negative emotions), and that could inform how to improve the welfare of intensively housed dairy cattle.

Caring animals and the ways we wrong them

Many nonhuman animals have the emotional capacities to form caring relationships that matter to them, and for their immediate welfare. Drawing from care ethics, we argue that these relationships also matter as objectively valuable states of affairs. They are part of what is good in this world. However, the value of care is precarious in human-animal interactions. Be it in farming, research, wildlife 'management', zoos, or pet-keeping, the prevention, disruption, manipulation, and instrumentalization of care in animals by humans is ubiquitous. We criticize a narrow conception of welfare that, in practice, tends to overlook non-experiential forms of harm that occur when we interfere with caring animals. Additionally, we point out wrongs against caring animals that are not just unaccounted for but denied by even an expansive welfare perspective: The instrumentalization of care and caring animals in systems of use can occur as a harmless wrong that an approach purely focused on welfare may, in fact, condone. We should therefore adopt an ethical perspective that goes beyond welfare in our dealings with caring animals.

Calves peak-end memory of pain

In humans, the 'peak-end' rule states that recollection of an experience is most often influenced by the peak (the most intense moment) and end of the experience. We investigated whether calves followed the peak-end rule in their memory of a painful procedure: disbudding. As proxies for retrospective and 'real-time' reports of pain, we used conditioned place aversion, and reflex pain behaviours. In two separate trials, calves were subjected to two disbudding conditioning sessions (one horn per treatment), acting as their own control. In the first trial, calves (n = 22) were disbudded and remained in a pen for 4 h, and disbudded and left in another pen for 4 h with an additional 2 h following an analgesic treatment. In the second trial, calves (n = 22) were disbudded and left in pens for 6 h during both treatments, receiving the analgesic at either 2 h or 4 h after disbudding. Calves were then tested for place aversion. For both trials we did not observe a preference for the pens where calves received analgesic treatment towards the end of the session. We did not find an association between aversion and the sum, peak or end of pain behaviours. Results are not consistent with a peak-end effect in calves' memory of pain.

Familiarity, age, weaning and health status impact social proximity networks in dairy calves

Social network analysis in dairy calves has not been widely studied, with previous studies limited by the short study duration, and low number of animals and replicates. In this study, we investigated social proximity interactions of 79 Holstein-Friesian calves from 5 cohorts for up to 76 days. Networks were computed using 4-day aggregated associations obtained from ultrawideband location sensor technology, at 1 Hz sampling rate. The effect of age, familiarity, health, and weaning status on the social proximity networks of dairy calves was assessed. Networks were poorly correlated (non-stable) between the different 4-day periods, in the majority of them calves associated heterogeneously, and individuals assorted based on previous familiarity for the whole duration of the study. Age significantly increased association strength, social time and eigenvector centrality and significantly decreased closeness and coefficient of variation in association (CV). Sick calves had a significantly lower strength, social time, centrality and CV, and significantly higher closeness compared to the healthy calves. During and after weaning, calves had significantly lower closeness and CV, and significantly higher association strength, social time, and eigenvector centrality. These results indicate that age, familiarity, weaning, and sickness have a significant impact on the variation of social proximity interaction of calves.

Indication of social buffering in disbudded calves

Most dairy calves are housed individually in early ontogeny but social housing has positive effects on calf welfare including an advantage of social buffering, i.e., when negative effects of stress are mitigated through social support of conspecific. The effects of social buffering has not yet been examined in relation to disbudding; a painful husbandry procedure commonly performed on young dairy calves. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of pair versus individual housing on calves’ behavioral reaction to disbudding. In total 52 female calves were randomly allocated either to individual (n = 16) or pair housing (n = 36, 18 focal). Calves were hot-iron disbudded with a local anesthetic and their spontaneous behavior in home pens was recorded for 24 h pre- and post-disbudding. Eating forage, ruminating, resting, exploration, play, self-grooming, and pain-related behaviors were quantified during eight 20 min intervals during the 24 h periods pre- as well as post-disbudding. In pair-housed (PAIR) calves social resting, active and passive allo-grooming were additionally recorded. The differences between individually housed (INDI, n = 10) and PAIR calves (n = 12) were tested by general linear models. The changes in pre- and post-disbudding behaviors in all calves as well as in social behaviors of PAIR calves were tested by paired t-test. We found that head shaking (t =  − 3.46, P = 0.0024), head rubbing (t = 4.96, P < 0.0001) and self-grooming (t = 2.11, P = 0.04) increased in all calves after disbudding. Eating forage increased only in PAIR calves (t = 2.50, P = 0.030) which also resulted in a difference between treatments with PAIR calves fed more often than INDI calves (F_1,18 = 12.96, P = 0.002). Differences in eating forage may be an indication of improved ability of PAIR calves to recover from disbudding. No other significant differences were detected between treatment groups which might have been caused by our limited sample. Our results provide the first evidence that housing treatment affects calves’ reactions to disbudding, with possible indication of social buffering.

Caring animals and care ethics

Are there nonhuman animals who behave morally? In this paper I answer this question in the affirmative by applying the framework of care ethics to the animal morality debate. According to care ethics, empathic care is the wellspring of morality in humans. While there have been several suggestive analyses of nonhuman animals as empathic, much of the literature within the animal morality debate has marginalized analyses from the perspective of care ethics. In this paper I examine care ethics to extract its core commitments to what is required for moral care: emotional motivation that enables the intentional meeting of another's needs, and forward-looking responsibility in particular relationships. What is not required, I argue, are metarepresentational capacities or the ability to scrutinize one's reasons for action, and thus being retrospectively accountable. This minimal account of moral care is illustrated by moral practices of parental care seen in many nonhuman animal species. In response to the worry that parental care in nonhuman animals lacks all evaluation and is therefore nonmoral I point to cultural differences in human parenting and to normativity in nonhuman animals.

Researching Human-Cattle Interaction on Rangelands: Challenges and Potential Solutions

Simple Summary

Research investigating the influence of human-animal interactions on beef cattle production and welfare often occurs during stress-inducing contexts, such as restraint and transport. Given that beef cattle which graze on expansive rangelands do not frequently interact with humans, assessment of animal response to humans may be inaccurate if they are only recorded during such stressful context. Future research aimed at identifying the causes and impacts of individual human–cattle relationships may consider conducting experiments while the cattle are in a low stress context, such as while ruminating, resting, or, grazing. By adapting methods used to research wildlife response to humans, researchers may be able to better understand how animal personality and previous experience can influence cattle production and welfare.

Abstract

Human-animal interaction (HAI) research spans across many scientific fields and animal taxa. For livestock species, HAI research tends to focus on animals that are managed in close proximity with humans such as poultry, dairy cattle, and swine. Given the nature of rangeland cattle production, HAI research with beef cattle often occurs in and around the processing environment. This high arousal context may skew behavioral and physiological responses by the animals due to the potentially negative interaction. The aim of this review is to describe cattle production on rangelands, examine the considerations and limitations of current HAI research used to evaluate interaction quality or traits of rangeland cattle, identify contexts in which rangeland cattle interact with humans, and provide recommendations for improving future HAI research with rangeland cattle. Current research delineating individual differences in response to humans by beef cattle occur during routine husbandry and management on rangelands (pragmatic) and in a research context (experimental). Human-cattle interactions can be distinguished based on the quality and goal of the interaction into four broad categories: human presence, human approach, human contact, and restraint. Limitations of HAI research with rangeland cattle are identified and reconciled by recommendations for HAI research that can take place outside of the processing environment (i.e., while cattle are ruminating, resting or grazing on rangelands).