The effect of pair housing on dairy calf health, performance, and behavior

Abstract

Individual housing of dairy calves prevails in Europe and North America despite its negative effects on calf development. One of the main reasons is that farmers find individual housing of calves more practical than group housing. A compromise between practice and welfare could be housing calves in pairs. Therefore, we aimed to compare health, feed intake, growth, and behavior in a novel arena of 22 individually (INDI) and 44 pair-housed calves that were randomly assigned a treatment. Diarrhea and respiratory problems were recorded every day for the period of 49 d. Intake of calf starter and milk were measured every day for the period 48 and 49 d, respectively. Calf body weight gains were calculated as average daily gain. Calves were individually tested in a novel arena at 11 to 18 d, and their behavior was recorded according to an ethogram including 8 behavioral categories. Behavioral categories were first diminished by principal component (PC) analysis. We found that 2 PC explained 66% of the total variation in calf behavior. Movement-related behaviors (activity, play, and crossing the stair) loaded positively on PC1, and PC2 had positive loading on self-grooming and negative loading on exploration. There were no effects of housing on calf health, feed intake, or average daily gain. The INDI calves had higher PC1 scores than pair-housed calves, indicating a rebound effect of movement. Our results are consistent with other studies that found no negative effect of pair housing of calves on their health, feed intake, or growth compared with individually-housed calves. The rebound effect of movement-related behaviors of INDI calves in a novel arena implies that individual housing of calves causes activity deprivation by the second week of age.

A survey of calf management practices and farmer perceptions of calf housing in UK dairy herds

“…For example, Costa et al (2015) found that pair-housed calves consumed 2.2 ± 0.22 kg/d of concentrates compared with only 1.26 ± 0.33 kg/d for individually housed calves. Furthermore, calf health was not compromised in these paired systems (Bučková et al, 2021;Mahendran et al, 2021). This trend continues in group housed calves, which have been shown to spend more time eating solids than individually housed calves (19.3 vs. 14.4 min/hr) (Babu et al, 2004).…”

“…Efficient rearing of healthy dairy heifer replacement calves requires adoption of optimal management practices that are applied using consistent methods across all staff members. There has been a plethora of recent literature that has led to a greater understanding of optimal management practices for calf rearing (Sinnott et al, 2021;Bučková et al, 2021;Ghaffari and Kertz, 2021;Santman-Berends et al, 2021), but the successful communication of these findings to key stakeholders (Jansen et al, 2010b;Moya et al, 2021), understanding of this information by farm staff, and then uptake of these recommendations still remains a challenge that impedes progression as an industry. Perinatal calf mortality worldwide has been reported to be between 2.4 and 9.7% (Cuttance and Laven, 2019a,b), with one UK paper estimating mortality to be 7.9%, (Brickell et al, 2009), and an Irish study finding average perinatal mortality to be 4.3% (Mee et al, 2008).…”

Overview of common practices in calf raising facilities

“… Cobb et al (2014a) reported that calves raised in either pairs or groups of three calves in a poor indoor environment had a tendency for an increased incidence of BRD during the first 90 days of life when compared to calves raised individually in the same barn. However, other data demonstrated that, at least when calves are pair-housed, the frequency of respiratory problems and gastrointestinal disorders were not different when compared to calves housed individually ( Bučková et al, 2021 ; Knauer et al, 2021 ). However, some studies focused in respiratory disease in pre-weaned calves grouped in pens of 20 animals have reported high morbidity ( Teixeira et al, 2017a ; Bringhenti et al, 2021 ).…”

“…Timing of socialization seems to be very important for benefits in solid feed intake. When socialization did not occur soon after birth, it did not result in benefits for feed intake and weight gain ( Bučková et al, 2021 ). Also, stress reduction during weaning was improved for calves grouped at 5 days of age in comparison to calves socialized at 28 days of life ( Bolt et al, 2017 ).…”

Historical Evolution of Cattle Management and Herd Health of Dairy Farms in OECD Countries

“…In addition, improvement in calves’ housing and implementation of preventive protocols based on vaccines have been developed [ 67 , 73 ]. The most common type of calf housing in the EU and in the USA is the individual housing of the new-born calf based, on observed good health results and weight gain [ 81 , 82 ]. This is a biosecurity measure, since this type of housing reduces the transmission of respiratory and gastrointestinal diseases, albeit limiting the animal’s natural behavior [ 61 ].…”