PSXI-5 Evaluation of behavioral traits of beef calves inoculated with a bovine-derived blend of Lactic Acid Bacteria.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract The gut microbiota influences animal behavior through bi-directional communication with the central nervous system. However, there is limited understanding of the use of microbial interventions with psychobiotics in beef cattle to alter stress-induced behaviors. We aimed to evaluate the effects of administering a bovine-derived mixture of Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB) during early life on stress-related behavior in beef calves. Thirty-two crossbred beef calves [66 ± 11 kg of body weight; 60 ± 6 d of age] were stratified by age and sex and randomly assigned to receive either two doses of an orally administrated LAB cocktail (n = 16; 10^9 CFU; LAB) or saline solution (n = 16; CON) three-days apart. After first inoculation (d 0), cow-calf pairs were allocated to four different paddocks (two/treatment) for 15 d, and maintained in a single pasture until weaning, at ~202 d of age. After weaning, calves from both treatments were housed in a single pen. Two reactivity indicators were evaluated by a trained observer on d 0, 3, 143 (weaning), 146, and 157, including the reactivity inside the chute (RSC) within the first 30 seconds of entering the chute, adding up movement (1-5), tension (1-4), body posture (1-3), breathing (1-2), kicking (1-2), and vocalization (1-2) scores; and the flight speed (FS, m/s) measured electronically, as the speed at which each animal exits the chute. Total steps (TS), lying time (LT), and standing time (ST) were recorded using pedometers (IceRobotics) from weaning to d 157. Data was analyzed using linear mixed models with repeated measurements following a completely randomized design. Results indicated FS at weaning had the fastest speed (1.6 ± 0.08 m/s, p = 0.019) compared to d 0 (1.23 ± 0.09 m/s) and d 157 (1.15 ± 0.09 m/s) but did not differ from d 3 and d 143. A day effect was also detected for RSC (p = 0.004), where animals on d 0 had the highest value (4.28 ± 0.17) and was different from d 157 (3.47 ± 0.18); however, it did not differ from d 3, d 143, and d 146. The TS indicated that calves increased their number of steps (up to 7092 steps per day) for the three days following weaning (p < 0.001) and stayed under 1295 steps per day for the remaining days of the evaluation. Treatments did not impact any of the response variables measured (p ≥ 0.3), with calves from both treatments standing more and lying less time during the first three days post-weaning (p < 0.001) compared to the last eleven days of the recordings. While weaning influences calf behavior, our findings do not support that administering a bovine-derived LAB mixture during early life affects calves’ reactivity or stress-related behaviors.
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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) | 0.001 | 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 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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".