Holstein calves' preference for potential physical enrichment items on different presentation schedules
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Impoverished housing environments are thought to prevent motivated behaviors and may result in frustration. We first aimed to investigate an effective physical enrichment protocol to improve dairy calves' welfare and initially determine their use of various items. Thereafter, we aimed to determine dairy calves' preference for and ways of interacting with various items, and whether this was influenced by social housing. In experiment 1, at 21 ± 3 d of age, 27 individually housed calves were assigned alternately into 1 of 3 treatments: control (CON, no additional items), rotating enrichment (RE, one item each week on a rotating presentation schedule), and fixed enrichment (FE, 4 types of item at the same time). The items were stationary brushes, ropes, springs, nets filled with strawberry-scented hay, and dry teats. Calves' behaviors were observed from 4 to 7 wk of age using focal observations after feeding, followed by instantaneous scan sampling. Their behavioral responses to a novel object were assessed at 43 ± 1 d of age. In the instantaneous scans, calves in FE tended to interact with items more often than calves in RE. Calves in RE and FE expressed less non-nutritive oral behavior than those in CON. Latency to touch novel objects did not differ significantly between treatments. Calves in RE and FE interacted with nets filled with strawberry-scented hay more often than with other items in instantaneous scans. In experiment 2, 24 calves were assigned alternately into 8 individual pens and 8 pair pens at 2 d of age. All pens were provided with a stationary brush, plastic chain, net filled with strawberry-scented hay, and dry teat. Calves' behaviors were collected from 2 to 5 wk of age using instantaneous scan sampling. Calves interacted with nets filled with strawberry-scented hay more often than with other items. Pair housing reduced calves' interactions with items compared with individual housing. Individually and pair-housed calves' frequencies of overall interaction with items varied with time of day, with frequencies increasing to peaks at 0700, 1500, and 1900 h. Calves showed scratching, sniffing, sucking, butting, and hay intake toward nets filled with strawberry-scented hay and showed the first 3 behaviors toward stationary brushes, plastic chains, and dry teats. In conclusion, dairy calves are likely to prefer a fixed multi-item enrichment presentation schedule over a rotating schedule with a single enrichment item presented at one time. For the fixed multi-item enrichment presentation schedule, items were used more in individual pens than in pair pens, and a diurnal pattern was observed for use of the items. Nets filled with scented hay might be the most multifunctional and attractive item of the items tested.
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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) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 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".