13. Beef Cattle Behaviour Flashcards

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1
Q

Beef cattle vision:
- Panoramic vision
- Binocular vision
- Focus
- Pupil shape
- Distinguishing wavelengths
- Depth perception

A

Panoramic vision = 330
- Blind spot directly behind them

Binocular vision = 25-50
- Allows for greater predator awareness
- Don’t have good depth perception

Focus
- Tend to have weak eye muscles which inhibits their ability to focus quickly on objects
- What they see lacks definition so they will often balk and refuse to cross a shadow or drain grate

Pupils
- Slit-shaped

Wavelengths
- Can distinguish long wavelengths better than shorter wavelengths
- Long: yellow, orange and reds
- Short: blue, grey and greens
- Can distinguish all colours from a grey background except blue

Depth perception
- Poor

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2
Q

Smell

A
  • While grazing, cattle constantly sniff the pasture
  • Can distinguish smell
  • Secondary olfaction system can detect pheromones (volatile chemicals) important for both reproduction and feed selection
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3
Q

Taste

A
  • Cattle have ~30,000 taste buds that can differentiate acid (sour), bitter, salt, and sweet solutions
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4
Q

What are cattle very sensitive to?

A

Noise; ears are very sensitive
- Can be calmed with soothing music or stressed by loud noises
- Dairy breeds are more sensitive to sound and touch than beef breeds

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5
Q

How can touch be used to calm cattle?

A

Cutaneous sensitivity (skin sensitivity) can be used to calm cattle by scratching under the neck and behind the ears
- areas they find difficult to access and scratch

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6
Q

How do cattle flight zones differ?

A
  • Cattle flight zones vary greatly depending on how cattle have been raised and handled
  • Feedlot cattle may move away from ppl entering their flight zone (approx 1.5m)
  • Less handled range cattle may have a flight zone of 30m
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7
Q

When are dominance hierarchies in young beef steers formed?

A

Soon after weaning
- remain stable even when the same groups are moved to other pens (new environment)

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8
Q

How is dominance related to eating behaviour in beef cattle?

A

Dominance and eating behaviour have been observed in beef cattle where only one animal at a time could eat
- found that high-ranking cattle had fewer meals but tended to spend more time per day eating

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9
Q

How does the dominance hierarchy in cattle “function” to avoid a fight?

A
  • In an exchange btw 2 animals where one is larger, healthier, stronger and older it may take no more than a movement gesture or threat to make the smaller animal submit or yield space
  • An aggressive bull will turn his body perpendicular to a challenger to display full height and length
  • Aggression is expressed by bunting or striking a challenger with the head
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10
Q

What breed of cattle are generally more excitable?

A

Bos indicus cattle are generally more excitable than the European Bos taurus breeds

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11
Q

Leadership

A

Patterns of leadership during grazing movements
- High-ranking animals (not always the most dominant) TEND to lead; does not have control over herd direction, if a change of flight direction is caused it will run forward back to the front
- Medium ranks tend to follow
- Low-ranking animals tend to be independent
- Cattle will follow the lead animal quietly

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12
Q

How many individuals can a cow identify?

A

They can individually identify 50-70 other herd members

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13
Q

Grazing

A
  • 9hrs/day
  • Graze pasture that is 5 cm above the ground, distinguishing plants while grazing
  • Affected by temp; in very high temps they will graze predominantly at night
  • Move slowly across the pasture with muzzle close to the ground, biting and tearing off grass, which is swallowed without much chewing
  • Ruminate when resting and time devoted to ruminating is approximately 3/4 of that spent in grazing
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14
Q

Group cohesion during grazing

A
  • In open treeless areas, free-ranging cattle group into large mods
  • The distance btw individuals are smaller than in areas with sparse to moderate tree and shrub cover
  • Mob is more tightly clumped in open areas which affects the grazing pattern
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15
Q

What does the amount of time that cattle spend resting depend on?

A
  1. Environmental conditions
  2. Time spent ruminating and grazing
  3. Breed
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16
Q

When will cattle choose non-habitual resting sites?

A

If the preferred ones are close to the noise or disturbance

17
Q

What are 9 maintenance behaviours involved in the herd’s day?

A
  1. standing
  2. walking
  3. lying
  4. feeding
  5. drinking
  6. self-grooming
  7. allo-grooming
  8. agnostic behaviour
  9. ruminating
18
Q

As a cow reaches estrus, what happens to the bull?

A

The bull becomes very excited and follows her closely (tailgating), licking and smelling her external genitalia and often exhibiting flehmen

19
Q

What are pre-copulatory patterns performed by the bull?

A

Pawing the ground and snorting, chin resting just before mounting and then copulation
- Copulation is short (seconds) compared with horses and pigs (minutes)

20
Q

What animals are mating the most?

A

The most dominant animals
- social ranking of bulls influences sexual activity

21
Q

As female cows become sexually receptive, what might they do?

A

They may mount of may be mounted by other cows, sniff males or become involved in mock ficking
- cows are receptive for ~1 day

22
Q

What is the level of sexual behaviour displayed determined by?

A

Genetics, environmental factors, physiological factors, health and previous experience
- bulls of dairy breeds are generally more sexually active than those of the beef breeds
- new herd members attract greater sexual attention

23
Q

How soon before estrus does a bull detect it?

A

The bull detects about 2 days before estrus and remains in the cow’s general vicinity

24
Q

What is the period of sexual receptivity (mounting behaviour)?

A

Ranges from 1-18 hrs with the average being about 4.4 hours

25
Q

Why may bulls who are used for artificial insemination or hand-breeding have poor semen quality or poor reproductive behaviour?

A

Lack of stimulatory effects otherwise provided by a prolonged courtship

26
Q

When does suckling begin?

A
  • 2-5 hrs after birth and the mother must be standing
  • Heifers that had a difficult birth take longer to stand
  • The calf vigorously butts the mother’s udder with its head while suckling to get the oxytocin flowing
27
Q

Why does the mother lick her calf?

A

To stimulate breathing, circulation, urination and defecation

28
Q

Are cows hiders or followers?

A

Hider species so the young are hidden near the birth site after birth and the afterbirth is eaten (bc it could attract predators)
- Within the first week of life the calf beings to follow the cow
- The distance maintained btw the cow and calf increases steadily with time after calving (keep in contact through vocalizing)

29
Q

When is teat sucking by the calf the most intense?

A

Soon after it stands up
- common for suckling to occur first from a front teat

30
Q

When do ‘nurseries’ form?

A
  • In the period before calves themselves are grazing
  • There may be ‘guard’ cows left in charge and observations are reported from cows under extensive rangeland conditions
  • For periods of the day, groups of calves will be found lying together for much of the day while cows are grazing
31
Q

Is maternal behaviour highly heritable in cattle?

A

The heritability of maternal behaviour is low in cattle so it is difficult for farmers to select for good mothering ability in bloodlines
- Contact btw the cow and her calf for a period as brief as 5 mins post-partum results in a strong specific maternal bond

32
Q

What 3 senses are involved in cow-calf identification?

A

Vision, olfactory, and vocal sense
- Cows will grow their calves ‘labelling’ them as their own

33
Q

How long does it take for the calf to stand? The heifer?

A
  • Calves: ~45 mins after birth, suckling 2-5 hrs later
  • Heifer: ~1 min but longer if it’s her first calf
34
Q

What are 3 abnormal cattle behaviours?

A
  1. Mis-mothering
  2. Buller-Steer Syndrome
  3. Abnormal oral behaviours (E.g. tongue rolling)