Behaviour of calves at introduction to nurse cows after the colostrum period

Abstract

In traditional housing systems for dairy herds, calves are very often placed in single boxes and fed milk from a bucket, which may lead to abnormal behaviour. In organic herds, for whom the aim is optimal animal welfare, there is interest in using suckling systems, where the calves have the opportunity to perform natural social behaviour. The success of introducing a calf to a nurse cow is expected to depend on the calf’s suckling experience, as well as the introduction procedure. A two-factorial experiment was carried out with the objective to investigate how calves are best introduced to the nurse cow during (the colostrum period (defined as the first 3 days postpartum). The calf was either with its own mother or fed colostrum from a teat-bucket. The length of the introduction period, where the calf was alone with the nurse cow before being introduced to a larger group of cows and calves, was either 1 or 2 days. The experiment showed that calves who had suckled colostrum from their own mother, suckled the nurse cow more and for longer periods than the teat-bucket fed calves ( P=0.0007 on day 1 and P=0.012 on day 2). Mothered calves licked and rubbed their nurse more (16.7 times versus 7.0 times; S.E.M.±2.3; P<0.05) and these calves cross-suckled less than teat-bucket fed calves (19.9 min versus 54.5 min; S.E.M.±14.9; P=0.03).