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Nogues, Emeline

University of British Columbia

Much recent research in the field of animal welfare science includes a focus on understanding individual variation in behaviour, rather than on group averages, and a growing body of literature is now describing stable individual differences in animal behaviour, also called personality traits and coping styles. The aim of my thesis was to explore the potential relationships between social behaviour, personality and coping style in dairy cattle. In Chapter 1, I give a general introduction to the concept of animal welfare and the context of my research. In Chapter 2, I provide a narrative review of social behaviour and individual differences in cattle in which I identify gaps in the literature that I address in the subsequent experimental chapters. Chapter 3 describes a study of indoor, group-housed cattle given the opportunity to access an outdoor bedded pack, such that individual cows could choose when to leave and to return. Some cows formed preferential associations (i.e., moved in and out of the barn together) indicating that a cows’ decision to move can be affected by others in their social group. In Chapter 4, I explored whether dairy calves benefit from the presence of a social partner during recovery from a painful procedure using a conditioned place avoidance paradigm. I found no evidence that the presence of a social partner affected avoidance; the social partner did not appear to provide a buffer for this experience. Calves varied greatly in their avoidance response, but this variation was not explained by differences in fearfulness. In Chapter 5, I characterized the coping strategy used by dairy heifers when introduced into a new social group and found that some heifers engaged in more agonistic interactions (consistent with a more proactive coping style), while others avoided their new pen mates (suggesting a reactive coping style). The strategy used affected their time-budget and behavioural synchronization with the new social group. Collectively, the results of my thesis provide new insights in how dairy cattle vary in their social behaviour when faced with three management practices: when offered outdoor access, when subjected to a routine painful procedure, and when regrouped.

Text

2023-12-12

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/86940

Applied Animal Biology

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/