Effects of Tail Docking Using a Rubber Ring With or Without Anesthetic on Behavior and Production of Lactating Cows
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Production and behavioral measures were recorded to determine the level of stress and pain associated with tail docking adult dairy cows with a rubber ring. The possible advantages of using an epidural anesthetic were also examined. Sixty-four lactating, mixed-parity, Holstein cows were randomly assigned to one of four treatment groups. The treatments were rubber ring docking with epidural anesthetic (RRA), rubber ring docking without anesthetic (RR), control with epidural anesthetic (CA), and control without anesthetic (C). Behavior was examined on d 0, +1, +2, and +6. Milk production and feed intake were monitored. Cows exhibited subtle behavioral changes following application of rubber rings, as well as after epidural administration on d 0 and tail amputation on d +6. After treatment on d 0, the RR, RRA, and CA groups displayed less tail shaking than the C group. The RR and RRA cows continued to exhibit less tail shaking on d +1, +2, and +6. Also on d 0, the RR and RRA groups held their tails in the raised position less than the C and CA groups. After amputation on d +6, the RR and RRA groups spent longer with their tails pressed to their bodies than the C and CA groups. No significant differences in milk production or feed intake were found. Results suggest that tail-docking adult dairy cattle with rubber rings causes, at most, mild discomfort and that there is no benefit in using an epidural anesthetic. However, long-term effects need to be investigated.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 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) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".