A method of outdoor housing dairy calves in pairs using individual calf hutches
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Interest in housing dairy calves in groups is currently growing. Group housing using individual calf hutches, a resource already available in most dairy farms in North America, could provide a novel housing method that can be a simple way to implement group housing on farm. The main objective of this study was to determine whether pair housing dairy calves in hutches outdoors would result in similar weight gain and milk intake compared with individual housing in hutches. The study was designed to avoid competition for resources (including milk and solid feed, teat, bucket, outdoor space, and hutch) to test a setup that has the potential to maximize performance and calf growth. Secondary objectives were to document how calves in both treatments use their environment in terms of time spent and behaviors performed in each area, how paired calves interact, and the time they spend together. Single calves (n = 6/season) were housed in 1 hutch with an attached outdoor environment; paired calves (n = 6 pairs/season) were given twice the resources. Calves were fed up to 16 L/d of milk replacer. Daily milk intake and weekly weight gains were recorded. Behavioral observations were recorded live once per week for 5 (summer) or 4 (winter) nonconsecutive periods. Paired and single calves had similar weight gain (averaging from 1.1 to 1.3 kg/d across trials) and milk intake (averaging from 11.1 to 13.7 kg/d across trials), showing no difference in performance between treatments. Low occurrences of cross sucking (averaging from 0.1 to 0.4 bouts/h of observation per pen across trials) and displacements at the teat (0.8 to 1.4 bouts/h of observation per pen across trials) were found. All calves altered their behavior in some way to accommodate companions; paired calves were seen interacting and spending time together (i.e., lying in the same hutch), and in the summer trial single calves spent less time lying inside the hutch than paired calves, presumably to have visual access to other calves. The solution of mixed indoor and outdoor housing environments tested as part of this study showed that calves make use of all spaces provided to them in winter and in summer conditions while maintaining good performance. Housing calves in pairs using individual hutches can be a suitable alternative to housing calves individually in hutches outdoors.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
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".