Effect of temperament and behavioural reactions to the presence of a human during the pre-mating period on reproductive performance in farmed mink (<i>Mustela vison</i>)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The present study sought to evaluate the relationship between temperament, pre-mating behaviour and reproductive performance in farmed female mink (Mustela vison). Temperament was measured by using a stick test and behavioural reactions to the presence of a human during pre-mating period by a walking test. The experimental animals comprised 100 confident and 100 fearful scanblack female mink. In each temperament group, 58% of female mink were primiparous and 42% were multiparous. The length and timing of mating periods and the length of the gestation period were similar in all groups. Pooled data showed that the length of the gestation period correlated negatively with litter size (r = -0.17, P = 0.03). The whelping proportions for confident and fearful primiparous female mink were 81% and 74% (P = 0.37), respectively, and for multiparous females 83% and 81% (P = 0.78), respectively. The number of kits per mated and whelped female at parturition (P < 0.01 and P = 0.04, respectively) and at weaning (P < 0.01 and P = 0.07, respectively) was significantly higher in confident than in fearful females. A significant correlation between kit losses and litter size was found only in primiparous and multiparous confident females (r = 0.35, P = 0.02; r = 0.32, P = 0.07). Postnatal kit mortality was higher in primiparous confident females than fearful females. During walking tests, fearful animals, irrespective of age, remained in side the nest box more frequently than did confident ones. Stationary behaviour outside the cage (lying, sitting, standing, etc.) was more common in confident than in fearful animals (P < 0.001). Significant differences in locomotor activity or stereotypies were not found between the groups. In multiparous fearful females, the whelping result declined significantly with the increasing incidence of stereotypies (r = -0.37, P = 0.04). In primiparous fearful female mink, the relationship was the reverse (r = 0.37; P = 0.01). We conclude that the significant temperament dichotomy (confident vs. fearful) found in farmed mink stock has a marked effect on the reproductive performance of this species. Key words: Farm-bred mink, personality trait, temperament, reproductive performance, domestication
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".