Influence of winter weather and shelter on activity patterns of beef cows
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Large ungulates grazing native rangelands during winter must balance forage intake, a source of energy gain, with minimizing thermal stress, a source of energy loss. Another source of energy loss, energy expended, is related to time spent in different activities. Natural or man-made shelter may alter time spent in different activities. Our objectives were to determine if access to windbreaks altered diurnal activity patterns of beef cattle grazing a windy, foothill range site during winter, and if diurnal activity patterns could be related to weather. We observed diurnal activity patterns of cattle with and with out access to windbreaks (windbreak, nonwindbreak) for two winters on an exposed pasture in southwest Montana. Actual use of windbreaks was only recorded in Winter 2. Windbreak cattle did not use the windbreak until day 16; subsequently, time spent behind windbreaks ranged from 0 to 30%. Activity patterns of windbreak and nonwindbreak cattle differed in subtle ways, indicating they used similar behaviors to minimize energy expended and to maximize energy gain. Time spent grazing was inconsistent between the two winter trials, possibly reflecting large differences in body condition when they entered each winter. For individual groups, time spent grazing (Winter 1, 33–96%; Winter 2, 18–94%) and standing (Winter 1, 0–63%; Winter 2, 0–78%) varied widely on a day-to-day basis, reflecting either an immediate response to that day's weather, or possibly a compensatory response to the previous day’(s’) weather, especially following cold, windy days. Wind velocity had minimal effect on grazing time, presumably because high wind velocities were associated with relatively warm days, or the animals were in sufficient condition to tolerate high wind velocities. Instead of minimizing energy expended by lying down during extreme cold, cattle spent more time standing, which maximizes heat gain from solar radiation. During winter, cattle behavior is a tradeoff between maximizing energy gain (thermal and food) and minimizing energy loss (thermal and metabolic). Key words: Activity, behavior, cattle, shelter, thermal, weather
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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".