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Indication of a personality trait in dairy calves and its link to weight gain through automatically collected feeding behaviours

Farm animal personality traits are of interest since they can help predict individual variation in behaviour and productivity. However, personality traits are currently inferred using behavioural tests which are impractical outside of research settings. To meet the definition of a personality trait,...

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Autores principales: Carslake, Charles, Occhiuto, Francesca, Vázquez-Diosdado, Jorge A., Kaler, Jasmeet
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9653382/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36371532
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-24076-x
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author Carslake, Charles
Occhiuto, Francesca
Vázquez-Diosdado, Jorge A.
Kaler, Jasmeet
author_facet Carslake, Charles
Occhiuto, Francesca
Vázquez-Diosdado, Jorge A.
Kaler, Jasmeet
author_sort Carslake, Charles
collection PubMed
description Farm animal personality traits are of interest since they can help predict individual variation in behaviour and productivity. However, personality traits are currently inferred using behavioural tests which are impractical outside of research settings. To meet the definition of a personality trait, between-individual differences in related behaviours must be temporally as well as contextually stable. In this study, we used data collected by computerised milk feeders from 76 calves over two contexts, pair housing and group housing, to test if between-individual differences in feeding rate and meal frequency meet the definition for a personality trait. Results show that between-individual differences in feeding rate and meal frequency were related, and, for each behaviour, between-individual differences were positively and significantly correlated across contexts. In addition, feeding rate and meal frequency were positively and significantly associated with weight gain. Together, these results indicate the existence of a personality trait which positions high meal frequency, fast drinking, fast growing calves at one end and low meal frequency, slow drinking, and slow growing calves at the other. Our results suggest that data already available on commercial farms could be harnessed to establish a personality trait.
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spelling pubmed-96533822022-11-15 Indication of a personality trait in dairy calves and its link to weight gain through automatically collected feeding behaviours Carslake, Charles Occhiuto, Francesca Vázquez-Diosdado, Jorge A. Kaler, Jasmeet Sci Rep Article Farm animal personality traits are of interest since they can help predict individual variation in behaviour and productivity. However, personality traits are currently inferred using behavioural tests which are impractical outside of research settings. To meet the definition of a personality trait, between-individual differences in related behaviours must be temporally as well as contextually stable. In this study, we used data collected by computerised milk feeders from 76 calves over two contexts, pair housing and group housing, to test if between-individual differences in feeding rate and meal frequency meet the definition for a personality trait. Results show that between-individual differences in feeding rate and meal frequency were related, and, for each behaviour, between-individual differences were positively and significantly correlated across contexts. In addition, feeding rate and meal frequency were positively and significantly associated with weight gain. Together, these results indicate the existence of a personality trait which positions high meal frequency, fast drinking, fast growing calves at one end and low meal frequency, slow drinking, and slow growing calves at the other. Our results suggest that data already available on commercial farms could be harnessed to establish a personality trait. Nature Publishing Group UK 2022-11-12 /pmc/articles/PMC9653382/ /pubmed/36371532 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-24076-x Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Carslake, Charles
Occhiuto, Francesca
Vázquez-Diosdado, Jorge A.
Kaler, Jasmeet
Indication of a personality trait in dairy calves and its link to weight gain through automatically collected feeding behaviours
title Indication of a personality trait in dairy calves and its link to weight gain through automatically collected feeding behaviours
title_full Indication of a personality trait in dairy calves and its link to weight gain through automatically collected feeding behaviours
title_fullStr Indication of a personality trait in dairy calves and its link to weight gain through automatically collected feeding behaviours
title_full_unstemmed Indication of a personality trait in dairy calves and its link to weight gain through automatically collected feeding behaviours
title_short Indication of a personality trait in dairy calves and its link to weight gain through automatically collected feeding behaviours
title_sort indication of a personality trait in dairy calves and its link to weight gain through automatically collected feeding behaviours
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9653382/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36371532
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-24076-x
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