Abstract
The aim of this study was to assess the duration and frequency of behavioral observations of pregnant ewes as they approached lambing. An understanding of behavioral changes before birth may provide opportunities for enhanced visual monitoring at this critical stage in the animal’s life. Behavioral observations for 17 ewes in late pregnancy were recorded during two separate time periods, which were 4 to 6 weeks before lambing and before giving birth. It was normal farm procedure for the sheep to come indoors for 6 weeks of close monitoring before lambing. The behaviors of standing, lying, walking, shuffling and contraction behaviors were recorded for each animal during both time periods. Over both time periods, the ewes spent a large proportion of their time either lying (0.40) or standing (0.42), with a higher frequency of standing (0.40) and shuffling (0.28) bouts than other behaviors. In the time period before giving birth, the frequency of lying and contraction bouts increased and the standing and walking bouts decreased, with a higher frequency of walking bouts in ewes that had an assisted lambing. The monitoring of behavioral patterns, such as lying and contractions, could be used as an alert to the progress of parturition.
Highlights
Differences were found in the duration of behaviors (p < 0.001) with most of the time spent either lying (0.40) or standing (0.42), with other behaviors being 0.08 or less across time periods studied (Figure 1)
There was no effect of parity, time period, lambing assistance on duration of behaviors (p > 0.05; Table 1 and Figure 2)
There was no effect of parity on frequency of behaviors
Summary
A stockperson’s ability to assess animal behavior is a key component of their ability to recognize and treat ill-health, and evaluate the wellbeing of their livestock [1,2]. The visual assessment of livestock by humans is subjective and has several limitations such as the cost of labor and time to regularly observe individual animals. Several monitoring technologies have been proposed in recent years that predict animal behaviors from movement sensors on cattle or sheep [3,4,5,6,7,8]. Monitoring equipment can continuously and remotely track livestock, something that would be unrealistic and too costly for human observers to replicate [3]
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