ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Vet. Sci.
Sec. Animal Behavior and Welfare
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fvets.2025.1683861
This article is part of the Research TopicEnvironmental Enrichment: Neurobiology, affective states, and positive animal welfareView all 3 articles
Impact of early social housing on the play behaviour of neonatal and post-weaning dairy calves
Provisionally accepted
- 1School of Biodiversity, One Health and Veterinary Medicine, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom
- 2Scotland's Rural College, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
- 3School of Veterinary Medicine and Science, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom
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We aimed to assess the impact of early life housing and play experiences on neonatal and weaned calves play behaviour. A total of 96 female dairy calves were recruited from four Scottish dairy farms and assigned to individual (n = 48), paired (n = 24) or group (n = 24) housing at birth. Play behaviour was measured using IceTag accelerometers (Peacock Technology, UK) during two experimental periods in the same cohort of calves, at neonatal and weaned stages. A mixed-effects negative binomial regression analysis was used to assess how early social housing influences the play behaviour of neonatal and weaned calves. The analysis also considered the impact of early play on the play behaviour of weaned calves. Calves housed in paired or group pens from birth performed significantly more neonatal play compared to calves housed individually from birth. No lasting effect of early life housing on weaned calf play behaviour was observed. There was no correlation between counts of neonatal and weaned calf play. Calves with lower neonatal playfulness showed a numerical increase in play behaviour after weaning compared to those with higher neonatal playfulness. These findings add to the growing body of literature indicating that early life social housing provides a more positive welfare experience for pre-weaned dairy calves. The study also highlights the need for future research to understand the impact of rearing experiences and different management systems on play behaviour in weaned calves.
Keywords: Dairy calf behaviour, Positive animal welfare, Play behaviour, Social housing, Calf housing
Received: 11 Aug 2025; Accepted: 27 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 McKay, Ellis, Haskell and Gladden. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ciara McKay, School of Biodiversity, One Health and Veterinary Medicine, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom
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