Beef calves react differently to different handlers according to the test situation and their previous interactions with their caretaker
Since birth, twenty-four beef calves received either minimal or extensive contact with one experimenter and were observed in three tests between three and four months of age. In the first test, the calves observed with the familiar motionless experimenter spent less time away from a feeding bucket (5.6 ± 4.0 s) than when with an […]
Human-animal relationships at sheep and cattle abattoirs
There are accumulating international data in a number of livestock industries that show that a negative attitude by stockpeople towards interacting with pigs, dairy cattle and poultry is correlated with increased levels of fear and stress in farm animals and in turn reduced animal productivity. While most of this research has been on-farm, one study […]