Abstract
Food neophobia, i.e. the avoidance of novel foods, is common in ruminants and may provide a biologically relevant and practical way to test individual responses to novelty or challenge. We aimed to determine if behavioural responses in a food neophobia test (exposure to a novel total mixed ration) reflected boldness and exploratory personality traits derived from 3 traditional tests (open field, novel human and novel object) in dairy calves. We performed two Principal Component Analyses, one using behaviours from 3 traditional tests (3 factors: ‘Bold’, ‘Exploratory’ and ‘Active’), and one using behaviours from the food neophobia test (3 factors: ‘Eating’, ‘Inspecting’, and ‘Avoidance’). A regression analysis determined if individual factor scores from the food neophobia test predicted factor scores from the traditional tests. Contrary to our expectations, ‘Avoidance’ (latencies to approach and eat the novel food) did not predict boldness trait, and the factors ‘Inspecting’ (time spent inspecting food and empty buckets) and ‘Eating’ (time spent eating food and total intake) did not predict exploration trait, but they did predict active trait. These results suggest that the food neophobia test in our study resulted in context-specific behaviours, or that behavioural responses to a novel food present different underlying personality traits. The application of food neophobia to assess specific or generalized personality traits of dairy calves deserves further work.
Highlights
Food neophobia, i.e. the avoidance of novel foods, is common in ruminants and may provide a biologically relevant and practical way to test individual responses to novelty or challenge
The objective of this study was to determine if individual differences in behavioural responses toward a novel food were comparable to behavioural responses toward an open-field, novel object and novel human in dairy calves, and if these behavioural responses reflected boldness and exploration personality traits across these different contexts
We found that either of these approaches resulted in the same behaviours loading together on a factor of the principal component analysis (PCA), meaning the same sets of behaviours were well correlated and resulted in similar conclusions regarding the association of behavioural measures in the food neophobia and traditional tests
Summary
I.e. the avoidance of novel foods, is common in ruminants and may provide a biologically relevant and practical way to test individual responses to novelty or challenge. Farm animals are exposed to various stressors, including diet changes, movement to a novel pen, and regrouping with unknown animals Each of these examples involve exposure to novelty or challenging situations that are potentially stressful or fear-eliciting, and often result in individual differences in behavioural and physiological responses[1]. The behaviours expressed during exposure to a novel food are thought to reflect fear or interest in the novel food, and a hesitancy to incorporate the novel food into the regular diet[24] We hypothesize that these elements of food neophobia are related to boldness (e.g. latency to approach novel food) and exploratory (e.g. time spent inspecting and eating the novel food) personality traits that have previously been identified in other novelty tests in dairy calves[5,25,26]. The food neophobia test may be relevant to young dairy calves given that they are presented novel diets as part of standard farm management (e.g. during weaning from a liquid to solid feed diet, and from a grain-based to forage-based diet)
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