Does housing influence maternal behaviour in sows?
Farrowing crates prevent sows during lactation from moving freely and interacting unrestrictedly with their piglets. The aim of this study was to compare sows during lactation in a group-housing system (GH; n = 23) and sows in a conventional single-housing system (SH; n = 24) with regard to their maternal behaviour. GH sows were only […]
Behavioural testing based breeding policy reduces the prevalence of fear and aggression related behaviour in Rottweilers
Behavioural testing allows to exclude dogs that are fearful and aggressive from the breeding population, but relatively little is known about the effectiveness of such strategies in practice. From 2001 till 2009 parent purebred Dutch Rottweilers had to pass the Socially Acceptable Behaviour (SAB)-test for their offspring to obtain a pedigree certificate. We evaluated if […]