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Poster De Conférence Année : 2023

Dairy cows’ social rank influences their drinking behavior

Résumé

Providing sufficient access to clean drinking water is essential for the productivity and welfare of dairy cows. However, dairy farms show high variability in how they provide water to cows. Insufficient water access could lead to competition for this resource and agonistic interactions between cows. Little is known about how the social rank of cows influences individual drinking behavior, particularly drinker choices and drinking times. The most subordinate cows could avoid high water competition times and places by developing adaptive strategies. We monitored drinking behavior and replacements (an actor cow butting or pushing a receiver cow, leading to the receiver being replaced by the actor) at the drinker in a group of 22 lactating Holstein dairy cows for 9 d by video recording. Cows had access to 6 electronic drinkers. We recorded 257 replacements during this period. Based on these replacements, we used the normalized David’s score to calculate the dominance score of each cow. We classified cows into 4 dominance categories using dominance score quartiles. Comparing categories in terms of dynamic of drinking, we found that subordinate cows modified their drinking behavior by shifting their drinking time from 2 to 3 h after dominants drank. Results also show subordinates and dominants used different drinkers among the 6 available, with subordinates mostly using the furthest from the feeding area. Our results indicate that cows’ social rank can determine specific drinking strategies to avoid greater water competition peaks within the group, even in experimental conditions with a high number of drinkers per cow.
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Dates et versions

hal-04420039 , version 1 (29-01-2024)

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Paternité - Pas d'utilisation commerciale - Pas de modification

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  • HAL Id : hal-04420039 , version 1

Citer

Ellynn Nizzi, Catherine Hurtaud, B. Foris, Jacques Lassalas, Anne Boudon. Dairy cows’ social rank influences their drinking behavior. ADSA annual meeting 2023, Jun 2023, Ottawa, Canada. , Journal of Dairy Science, 106 (supplement 1), pp.307, 2023, Abstracts of the 2023 American Dairy Science Association® Annual Meeting. ⟨hal-04420039⟩

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