Laterality of lying behaviour in dairy cattle
Licensed under
| Category | Journal Articles |
|---|---|
| Abstract |
Dairy cattle spend, on average, between 8 and 15 h/d lying down. Our objective was to describe the laterality of lying behaviour and assess several internal and external factors that may affect laterality. Internal factors included time spent and time since eating or lying before choosing to lie down again. External factors included the slope and the amount of bedding on the of the lying surface. The dependent variables were the proportion of time spent lying on left versus right sides (as affected by eating and by the slope of stalls) and the probability of switching sides between two consecutive lying bouts (as influenced by previous lying bouts and the amount of bedding). The proportion of time on the left and right sides matched the mixed pattern in the literature; some groups of cows (n=35, non-lactating, freestall housed) spent more time (56+or-3.0 |
| Date | 2009 |
| Publication Title | Applied Animal Behaviour Science |
| Volume | 120 |
| Issue | 3/4 |
| Pages | 125-131 |
| ISBN/ISSN | 0168-1591 |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.applanim.2009.05.010 |
| Language | English |
| Author Address | Department of Animal Science, University of California, Davis, 1 Shields Avenue, CA 95616, USA. cbtucker@ucdavis.edu |
| Cite this work |
Researchers should cite this work as follows: |
| Tags | |
| Badges |
