Case StudyCase Study: Effect of exercise programs during receiving in a commercial feedlot on behavior and productivity of Brahman crossbred calves: Results from a commercial environment and a comparison to the research environment
Section snippets
INTRODUCTION
High-risk receiving calves, upon arrival at the feedlot, experience a cacophony of simultaneous stressors that include, but are not limited to, social and environmental stress (weaning, commingling, establishing new social structures, transportation, familiarization with a new climate, new environment, and new humans), nutritional stress (diet change, reduction in time spent grazing, acidosis, bloat, change in time ruminating), and physiological stress (pathogen exposure, vaccination, abortion,
Animal Husbandry and Housing
All procedures for this study were approved by the Texas A&M University Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC 2016-0259). Brahman cross cattle (n = 688) purchased from sale barns in east Texas and Mississippi were used in this study. Upon arrival at the feedyard, cattle were sorted by sex into 2 receiving pens and allowed to rest for 4 d before placement in their home pen. When placed into their home pen, they were then sorted into pens (n = 6; 3 pens of steers and 3 pens of
Productivity and Health
Calf ADG differed between the research and commercial settings, with commercially housed receiving calves having greater ADG than research-housed weanling calves (Figure 1a; P < 0.0001); however, this is to be expected based on differences in calf age and development (weanlings vs. receiving calves). Enforced exercise treatments (FRE and PRO) negatively affected receiving-calf ADG in the commercial case study (Table 5). These results are consistent with observations from a research setting (
IMPLICATIONS
There are 2 primary implications from this research. First, this is the first evidence that behavior and husbandry research conducted on drylot-housed calves in the research environment can be representative of cattle behavior and responsivity to these husbandry practices in the commercial environment, because the results from both the commercial and research environments yielded similar results. Therefore, the results yielded from controlled research studies can translate to the commercial
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was supported by Texas A&M AgriLife Research (College Station).
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2022, Applied Animal Behaviour ScienceCitation Excerpt :Additionally, providing increased movement opportunity does not guarantee that all cattle will increase their daily exercise, as motivation and preference for locomotor activity is dependent on the individual (Shepley et al., 2020a, 2020b). Studies focused on the benefits of exercise for cattle in feedlots have found neutral or slightly negative impacts on productivity and no association with behaviours such as lying and ruminating, when cattle were exercised by either being driven by a stockperson or allowed access to a laneway (Daigle et al., 2017, 2018; Van Raay et al., 2018). This separates the welfare benefits of exercise alone, compared to the benefits of a more complex and stimulating environment such as pasture, that allows for grazing and exploration.
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Impact of a cattle brush on feedlot steer behavior, productivity and stress physiology
2020, Applied Animal Behaviour ScienceCitation Excerpt :While tongue rolling behavior may have been influenced by the presence of EE, this type of EE (a brush) did not address the intrinsic motivation behind the development of tongue rolling behavior. Tongue rolling occurred in cattle in both treatments, and, in alignment with previous research on feedlot cattle behavior (Daigle et al., 2017, 2018), the duration and frequency with which this behavior was performed increased throughout the duration of the study. Multiple hypotheses have been proposed regarding the motivation behind tongue rolling in cattle including diet composition and complexity (e.g. restrictive allowances of roughage, high levels of concentrate; Redbo et al., 1996; Redbo and Nordblad, 1997), gastrointestinal discomfort (Bergeron et al., 2006), prior experiences (e.g. artificial suckling; Sato et al., 1994) and the inability of contemporary captive housing to meet the behavioral needs of cattle (e.g. lack of grazing, simplistic, restricts ability to roam; Seo et al., 1998).
Effect of Dietary Corn Stalk Inclusion on the Performance of Non-Nutritive Oral Behaviors of Drylot-Housed Beef Steers
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The authors declare no conflict of interest.