The effect of stocking density and a blind on the behavior of Holstein dairy cattle in group maternity pens. Part I: Calving location, locomotion, and separation behavior
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In a more natural setting, dairy cows separate from herdmates and seek a secluded area to give birth. However, on many dairy facilities, cows calve in barren group pens with limited space, which may limit their ability to perform these behaviors. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of stocking density and provision of a blind (a single-sided solid partition) in group bedded pack maternity pens on the behavior of dairy cattle. The study included 4 experimental treatments: (1) high stocking density (7.7–12.9 m2 of lying space/cow) with a blind, (2) low stocking density (15.4–25.8 m2) with a blind, (3) high stocking density without a blind, and (4) low stocking density without a blind. We analyzed the effect of these treatments on locomotor and separation behavior as well as blind use during the 24 h before calving. A total of 127 primiparous heifers and 247 multiparous cows were housed in 16 mixed-parity groups (4 groups per treatment) from approximately 3 wk before to immediately after calving. Locomotor behavior increased from 24 to 2 h before calving regardless of treatment but increased the most in high stocking density pens without a blind. Additionally, heifers performed more locomotion than cows. Animals increased their distance from other cows beginning approximately 4 h before calving. Animals in low stocking density pens had a greater distance from other cows compared with those in high stocking density pens. Additionally, heifers had a greater distance from penmates during the 4 h before calving than cows. More animals calved in the area of the pen that contained a blind compared with the same respective areas of high and low stocking density pens that did not contain a blind. These results suggest that periparturient dairy cattle in group maternity pens are motivated to seek seclusion at calving, but increased stocking density may impede their ability to do so. Providing additional space and a blind may benefit periparturient dairy cows and heifers by facilitating natural calving behaviors.
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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 | 0.002 | 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 | 0.001 |
| 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".