The effects of environmental enrichment on some welfare indicators in fattening cattle, housed at different stocking densities

Abstract

The effects of environmental enrichment were assessed at different stocking densities on fattening cattle welfare. The study included four groups of heifers observed during four-month final commercial fattening. The heifers were housed in non-enriched and enriched environments at low (n = 14; 4.5 m2/animal) and high (n = 19; 3.3 m2/animal) stocking density. Environmental enrichment consisted of a grooming brush and salt blocks. Heifer welfare was assessed using selected indicators from the Welfare Quality® assessment protocol for cattle. The study results showed that the heifers housed at high stocking density used environmental enrichment materials significantly more frequently as compared with heifers housed at low stocking density (P<0.05), whereas there was no difference in their use of particular enrichment materials. The effect of environmental enrichment on heifer welfare was mainly manifested in a reduction in the expression of some forms of aggressive behaviour; therefore, this finding should encourage the use of enrichment materials such as those presented in this study which are commercially available, relatively inexpensive and simple to use.

Environmental enrichment during yard weaning alters the performance of calves in an attention bias and a novel object recognition test

“…Although it was hypothesised that the impact of enrichment on the measures of biological functioning would be small, no significant effect of treatment on faecal cortisol metabolites, body weight, and internal body temperature was found. This is in line with previous studies showing no impact of grooming brush access on the cortisol concentrations (Ishiwata et al, 2006;Matkovićet al, 2020;Park et al, 2020) and weight gain (Ishiwata et al, 2006;Ninomiya, 2019;Park et al, 2020) of cattle. It is possible that the stress induced by weaning masked any potential impacts of enrichment on these biological measures as weaning causes physiological responses such as increased cortisol, protein, and urea concentrations and neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio in calves, which are reduced with time (Kim et al, 2011;Lynch et al, 2011).…”

Salivary Cortisol Concentration in Fattening Heifers Kept in an Enriched Environment at Different Stocking Densities

“…During weekly observations, an animal could have been repeatedly recorded while exhibiting the same or a different behavior. The results pertaining to the grooming brush and salt blocks usage have been reported previously (Matković et al, 2020).…”

“…No other significant (P > 0.05) intergroup differences in cortisol concentration were recorded (Figure 1). The results obtained could be explained by the more frequent aggressive interactions of heifers in a non-enriched environment also at a lower stocking density (Matković et al, 2020), i.e., with a more room available for their manifestations, thus maintaining the steady cortisol concentrations until the end of fattening in this heifer group (Figure 1). ), whereas the salt blocks have not been widely used in cattle breeding.…”

“…Previous studies have proven that the fattening cattle favorably responds to the grooming brush, in particular because its high motivation for grooming is met (Wilson et al, 2002;Ninomiya, 2019;Park et al, 2020b), and it equally favorably responds to the salt blocks because its nutritional requirement and a necessity to explore the environment (Pelley et al, 1995). The studies conducted by Šimić et al (2018) and Matković et al (2020), which assessed different stocking densities in addition to an environmental enrichment, demonstrated that the environment enriched with a grooming brush and salt blocks has reduced the aggressive behavior expression in the fattening heifers. The latter study also found a significant positive correlation between a salt block usage and the type of aggressive behavior (displacement), which the authors were inclined to attribute to a high heifers' interest to access the salt blocks.…”