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Relationships Between Social Dominance and Feeding Behaviour in Lactating Heifers During Periods of Heavy Competition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 November 2017

A.D. Kenwright  and
J.M. Forbes
A.D. Kenwright
Affiliation:
Department of Animal Physiology and Nutrition, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT.
J.M. Forbes
Affiliation:
Department of Animal Physiology and Nutrition, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT.
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Extract

Previous research has shown that social dominance in dairy herds can be measured using replacements of one cow by another at feed stations (Rutter et al,1987). When there is competition for feed or space, the motivation to engage in physical and non-physical agonistic interactions will be stronger than if resources are freely available. When resources are limited, social dominance becomes very important and high ranking animals have priority.

This becomes especially important after cows are returned from milking and/or when fresh feed is added when the number of cows is far greater than the number of feeding spaces (Campling and Morgan, 1981). This experiment aimed to further investigate the way in which social interaction between cows affects the feeding behaviour, particularly at times of peak feeding activity.

Type
Silage and Feeding Behaviour
Information
Proceedings of the British Society of Animal Production (1972) , Volume 1993: Winter meeting , March 1993 , pp. 150
Copyright
Copyright © The British Society of Animal Production 1993

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References

1) Rutter, S.M., Jackson, D.A., Johnson, C.L. and Forbes, J.M. 1987. Automatically recorded competitive feeding behaviour as a measure of social dominance in dairy cows. Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci., 17: 41–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2) Campling, R.C. and Morgan, C.A. 1981 Eating behaviour of housed dairy cows, a review. Dairy Sci. Abstracts 43: 57–63.Google Scholar