The behavioural response of cattle (Bos taurus) to artificial weaning in two stages
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Two factors presumed to affect the behavioural response of cattle (Bos Taurus) to artificial weaning were investigated: the termination of nursing, and the physical separation of cows and calves. A two-stage process was used to disconnect these traditionally linked components. First, the behaviour of cows and calves was quantified in response to preventing nursing by having calves wear an antisucking device (Stage 1). Then the behavioural response of cows and calves to being separated was observed (Stage 2). Control pairs were weaned abruptly; nursing ended when cows and calves were separated. Preventing nursing while pairs were still together had almost no effect on measures of general activity with the exception of causing a slight increase in the rate of vocalizing. Calves wearing antisucking devices spent the same amount of time eating as controls. The behavioural responses of two-stage pairs to separation were favourably reduced compared to controls. In one study, two-stage cows vocalized 84% less than controls, spent 60% less time walking, and 13% more time lying, compared to controls. Two-stage calves called 97% less than controls, spent 61% less time walking, and 30% more time eating. In another study, preventing nursing for longer (3 versus 14 d) had no noticeable beneficial effects on the behaviour response to separation. In three separate trials two-stage calves gained more weight during the first week after separation from their dams. The two-stage process further reduced the behaviour responses when compared to weaning by fenceline contact. The benefits of two-stage weaning were also observed with dairy calves weaned from their dams at 5 weeks of age. The combined results of these studies indicate that the traditional method of weaning, by simultaneously terminating nursing and separating pairs, exacerbates the behavioural responses of cows and calves. Imposing these in two separate stages did not produce the same additive effect suggesting that the traditional weaning method produces a negative synergistic effect on the behaviour response. Based on the evidence two-stage weaning offers a viable production practice that is likely to improve the welfare of cows and calves.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
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 | 0.001 |
| 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 | 0.001 |
| 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".