RESEARCHES ON GROOMING BEHAVIOR OF THE DAMCALF COUPLE DURING THE FIRST WEEK AFTER CALVING
Keywords:
mother cows, newly born calves, grooming behavior, Romanian Black and WhiteAbstract
This paper is dealing with the maternal behavior during the first week after calving.
Researches were carried out during the winter season on Romanian Black and White
breed dam-calf couples. The behavior of calves and their mothers was nonstop video
recorded during the first, second and seventh day after calving. For a better
interpretation the recorded material was divided in three periods for every 24 hours
of surveillance: 07:00 to 15:00, 15:00 to 23:00, and 23:00 to 07:00. Calves received
attention from their mothers in 18 to 33 grooming periods during the first day after
calving. The number of grooming periods decreased to 6 – 15 periods per day in the
seventh day after calving. The total length of grooming periods also decreased from
the first day to the seventh day after calving from 26.5 minutes to 7.4 minutes on
each 8-hour time frame. There were also contacts between mother cows and their
calves that were not followed by grooming (sniffing). The number of contacts without
grooming was higher during the first two days after calving and decreased on the
seventh day after calving. During the first week of life calves received, 55.6 minutes
per day of care from their mothers, and there were, on average, 8.1 contacts without
grooming between mothers and calves.
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