Patterns of maternal-offspring behaviour of dairy sheep and potential association with mammary health
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Behaviour during lactation and its relationship with mammary health was investigated in 12 dairy ewes (six with single lambs and six with twins) for 42 d after lambing. Behavioural recordings were made. Samples of teat duct material and of mammary secretion were collected for bacteriological and cytological examination. Ewes performed similar patterns of behaviour as those described in the literature for meat breeds, but with some differences. No negative maternal behaviours were observed; ewes showed reduced “Grooming” and “Sniffing” immediately post-partum. Of 480 duct or secretion samples, 39 and 3, respectively (P < 0.001), yielded bacteria. There was no difference in the frequency of bacterial isolation from ewes suckling singles or twins: 46 and 54% of isolates, respectively (P = 0.637). There was greater frequency of bacterial isolation during the first stage of lactation (day 0–day 3), 0.125, compared with the second (day 4– day 11), 0.083, the third (day 12–day 30), 0.063, and the fourth (day 31–day 42), 0.069 (P < 0.001). There was also greater frequency of positive California Mastitis Test scores during the first stage of lactation, 0.917, compared with that in stages 2 (0.550), 3 (0.140) and 4 (0.181) (P < 0.001). There was decreasing duration of “Sucking attempt” and “Successful suck” throughout lactation (P < 0.05). There was increasing frequency of “Hindering sucking” and of “Head up posture” from first to subsequent stages of lactation (P = 0.038 and P = 0.002), whilst “Hindering sucking” coincided with end of “Sucking bouts” of lambs. It is concluded that termination of lamb’s sucking activity by the ewe when her mammary glands have been emptied may prevent damage to the teat and likely development of mastitis. Furthermore, frequent and longer sucking events by lambs during early lactation, may contribute to increased bacterial recoveries from mammary glands of ewes. Key words: Sheep, maternal behaviour, mastitis, sucking, post-partum period, lactation, mammary infection
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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 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 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".