Studies on step–kick behavior and stress of cows during milking in an automatic milking system

Welfare implication of measuring heart rate and heart rate variability in dairy cattle: literature review and conclusions for future research

“…While previously published research have documented no considerable stress on the basis of HR in conventional milking parlours during milking (Hopster et al, 1998;Rushen et al, 1999), in cows milked in an automatic milking system HR increased significantly during a 5-min period before entering the milking stall, but rapidly decreased in the first 5 min of milking (Wenzel et al, 2003). Becoming adaptated to the novel milking environment, this pattern could not be observed as proved by HR (Hopster et al, 2002;Weiss et al, 2005) and HRV studies as well (Neuffer et al, 2004;Neuffer, 2006; Gygax et al, 2008).…”

“…A lower peak in the morning hours (0600 to 0800 h) and a higher peak in late afternoon (1630 to 1800 h) were demonstrated (Yamamoto, 1989;Aharoni et al, 2003;Brosh, 2007). Others reported HR increase in the early evening hours (Wenzel et al, 2003;Hagen et al, 2005;Kovács et al, 2012b), which was most likely caused by increased metabolic activity in the evening. These findings suggest that it is advised to record baseline HR parameters close to (30 min) the event to be studied or calculate an average HR value at rest from data recorded at different times of the day.…”

“…However, sudden pressure on the cattle's chest can also induce bradycardia (Clabough and Swanson, 1989). Therefore, an adaptation period of 1 h is needed for the animals to get accustomed with the equipment (Rushen et al, 2001;Mohr et al, 2002;Wenzel et al, 2003;Waiblinger et al, 2004;Stewart et al, 2008a), whereas others recommended 5 days in calves (Clapham et al, 2007) or 7 days in cows (Janžekovič et al, 2006). However, after fixing the girth, visible reactions occur only occasionally for about 5 to 10 min (Mohr et al, 2002) and cows show no obvious signs of being hampered by the equipment (Kovács et al, 2012b).…”

“…Furthermore, Gygax et al (2008) showed that the physiological reactions of cows measurable in HRV could HR and HRV in dairy cattle research 325 be different in different types of automatic milking systems. The findings of Ketelaar-de Lauwere et al (1998) suggested that cows in automatic milking systems with forced cow traffic (used by Hopster et al, 2002) spent less time lying in the cubicles than cows in systems with partially forced cow traffic (Hagen et al, 2004 and or free cow traffic (Wenzel et al, 2003; Gygax et al, 2008).…”

“…The stressfulness of the technological environment has been examined in many different contexts. Certain welfare studies proved that for intensively farmed cattle, the milking technology (Rushen et al, 2001;Wenzel et al, 2003), fear from given routine treatments (Holst, 1998) and pain (Broom, 1991;Mellor et al, 2000) mean such load that may cause stress (Dantzer and Mormède, 1983;von Borell, 2001) having a negative impact also on milk production (Rushen et al, 2001). Effects of technology and of social interactions can be described not only by classical descriptive behavioural observations (e.g.…”