Abstract
Individual housing of dairy calves is common farm practice, but has negative effects on calf welfare. A compromise between practice and welfare may be housing calves in pairs. We compared learning performances and affective states as assessed in a judgement bias task of individually housed and pair-housed calves. Twenty-two calves from each housing treatment were trained on a spatial Go/No-go task with active trial initiation to discriminate between the location of a teat-bucket signalling either reward (positive location) or non-reward (negative location). We compared the number of trials to learn the operant task (OT) for the trial initiation and to finish the subsequent discrimination task (DT). Ten pair-housed and ten individually housed calves were then tested for their responses to ambiguous stimuli positioned in-between the positive and negative locations. Housing did not affect learning speed (OT: F1,35 = 0.39, P = 0.54; DT: F1,19 = 0.15, P = 0.70), but pair-housed calves responded more positively to ambiguous cues than individually housed calves (χ21 = 6.79, P = 0.009), indicating more positive affective states. This is the first study to demonstrate that pair housing improves the affective aspect of calf welfare when compared to individual housing.
Highlights
Individual housing of dairy calves is common farm practice, but has negative effects on calf welfare
Studies across species, including birds and mammals show that housing in pairs provides animals with welfare benefits compared to individual housing, including a decrease in abnormal and stress-related behaviours, it is not clear whether these benefits match those provided by group housing
We found that housing treatments did not affect learning performance, neither in the initial operant task for active trial initiation nor in the total learning process, but that pair housing (PAIR) calves showed more Go responses in ambiguous trials, indicating that they were in a more positive affective state than individual housing (IND) calves
Summary
Individual housing of dairy calves is common farm practice, but has negative effects on calf welfare. Improvements in behaviour (e.g. reduced weaning stress[6,22] or less reactivity to novelty23) as well as enhanced learning abilities in reversal tasks[23,24] have been identified in pair-housed compared to individually housed calves. Improved learning abilities of pair-housed dairy calves may help the animals to cope with changes in their routine management later in life when dairy cattle are faced with many challenges, including the interaction with new equipment and changes in social structure, feeding environment or staff, e.g. when transitioned to the milking herd. The study by Meagher et al revealed that the majority of individually housed calves did not learn the reversal task at all, even when provided with twice as many sessions as required by an average pair-housed calf[24]
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