Stepping and kicking behaviour during milking in relation to response in human–animal interaction test and clinical health in loose housed dairy cows

Abstract

Associations between kicking and stepping behaviour during milking and response to humans, getting up behaviour as well as clinical health status in loose housed dairy cows were investigated. During a 12-month period behavioural and clinical data from 10 commercial Danish dairy herds were collected including in total 1196 individual cows. Hierarchical log-linear models for contingency tables were applied for an analysis of conditional associations among the included parameters. Results showed a general herd effect on occurrence of stepping and kicking behaviour during milking ( P<0.001). In general, stepping during milking was associated positively to daily milk yield ( P<0.05). However, low yielding cows showing avoidance behaviour at the clinical examination were also more likely to step during milking. Furthermore, stepping during milking was positively associated to avoidance in a human approach test ( P<0.001) as well as occurrence of ticks ( P<0.05), and cows with tick lesions that further avoided human approach were most likely to step during milking. Cows with teat lesions were more likely to kick during milking ( P<0.001), especially if they did not avoid human approach. The analysis showed no relation between lameness and kicking or stepping behaviour during milking.