CORRECTION article
Front. Vet. Sci.
Sec. Animal Behavior and Welfare
Corrigendum: Welfare of calves and heifers on dairy farms with cow-calf contact rearing or early separation
Provisionally accepted- University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Vienna, Austria
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PAGE \* Arabic \* MERGEFORMAT 31 Physical parameters with prevalences > 0 on more than 20 farms. 2 Physical parameters with prevalences > 0 on 20 farms or less. 3 For swellings, values for calves from 2 CCC and 2 ES farms were not available. 4 Due to occurrence on less than 4 farms, no statistical tests were conducted for these measures. 5 For calves: m2/animal, for heifers: m2/700 kg. 6 For comparison of only organic farms: CCC: n = 25 (calves) or n = 19 (heifers), ES: n = 14 (calves and heifers). PAGE \* Arabic \* MERGEFORMAT 3In the published article, there was an error in Table 10 as published. The descriptive and statistical values for Absence of prolonged thirst (only ES calves and CCC heifers), Comfort around resting (only calves), ease of movement (only CCC heifers), Absence of injuries (only ES calves), Absence of disease, Absence of pain induced by management (for both CCC and ES calves and heifers), Good feeding (only ES calves), Good housing (CCC and ES calves and ES heifers) and Good health (both CCC and ES calves and heifers) slightly changed. This is 1) due to the detected changes for the number of clean, functioning water points and disbudding and 2) due to slight necessary corrections for the calculation procedures for ease of movement, absence of injuries and absence of disease that were not displayed correctly in the submitted version. There is now a significant difference for the Criterion score for "Ease of movement" in heifers. However, this does not change the scientific conclusions as the underlying measure "space allowance" had shown a significant difference before and is already discussed in the published manuscript. In addition, there is now a significant difference for "Good feeding" in calves. Also here, this does not change the scientific conclusion as the significant difference in the underlying measure "Number of clean, functioning water points" has been thoroughly discussed in the submitted version. The corrected Table 10 and its caption appear below.The authors apologize for this error and state that this does not change the scientific conclusions of the article in any way. The original article has been updated. 1 Criterion contributes to Principle "Good feeding". 2 Criterion contributes to Principle "Good housing". 3 Criterion contributes to Principle "Good health". 4 Criterion contributes to Principle "Appropriate behaviour". 5 To compare scores for "Good human-animal relationship" in calves a regression model with farm, rearing system and percentage of tests in single housing was calculated to take into account differing test location. In the published article, there was an error. Resulting from the changes described above, some sections of the text needed to be adapted.A correction has been made to three sentences in the Abstract. The first sentence previously stated:"Both CCC calves and heifers had more space (calves and heifers: p < 0.001), were less often disbudded (calves: p = 0.032, heifers: p = 0.020) and had more access to pasture (p < 0.001)."PAGE \* Arabic \* MERGEFORMAT 3The corrected sentence appears below: "Both CCC calves and heifers had more space (calves and heifers: p < 0.001), were less often disbudded (calves: p = 0.002, heifers: p = 0.003) and had more access to pasture (p < 0.001)."The second sentence previously stated: "Accordingly, rearing systems differed in Criterion and Principle scores. Both CCC calves (p = 0.011) and heifers (p = 0.043) scored higher in "Appropriate Behavior" and calves scored higher in "Good housing" (p = 0.001)."The corrected sentence appears below: "Accordingly, rearing systems differed in Criterion and Principle scores. Both CCC calves (p = 0.011) and heifers (p = 0.043) scored higher in "Appropriate Behavior" and calves scored higher in "Good feeding" (p = 0.047) and "Good housing" (p = 0.001)."The third sentence previously stated: "CCC farms had a better WQ classification than ES farms (calves: p = 0.022), heifers: p = 0.046) with 20% or 32% of CCC farms reaching "excellent" for calves or heifers compared to 4 or 8%, respectively.The corrected sentence appears below: "CCC farms had a better WQ classification than ES farms for calves (p = 0.023), and 20% or 26% of CCC farms reached "excellent" for calves or heifers compared to 0 or 12%, respectively."A correction has been made to three sentences in the Section 3.3 Criterion and Principle Scores. The first sentence previously stated: "Both CCC calves and heifers scored higher in the Criteria "Absence of pain induced by management procedures," "Other behaviors" (i.e., access to pasture) and "Positive emotional state" (i.e., QBA)."The corrected sentence appears below: "Both CCC calves and heifers scored higher in the Criteria "Ease of movement", "Absence of pain induced by management procedures", "Other behaviors" (i.e. access to pasture) and "Positive emotional state" (i.e. QBA, Table 10)."PAGE \* Arabic \* MERGEFORMAT 3The second sentence previously stated: "In addition, calves differed in the Criterion score "Ease of movement" (Table 10)."The corrected sentence appears below: This sentence can be deleted, as the information is integrated in the previous sentence.The third sentence previously stated: "Cow-calf contact calves had higher Principle scores for "Good housing" and "Appropriate Behavior" (Table 10)."The corrected sentence appears below: "Cow-calf contact calves had higher Principle scores for "Good feeding", "Good housing" and "Appropriate Behavior" (Table 10)."A correction has been made to one sentence in the Section 3.4 Overall classification. The sentence previously stated: "Five (= 20%) CCC farms received an overall classification "excellent" for calves, while this was only the case for 1 (4%) ES farm (p = 0.034, standardized residuum: |1.2|, Figure 1)."The corrected sentence appears below: "Five (= 20 %) CCC farms received an overall classification "excellent" for calves, while this was the case for no ES farm (p = 0.023, standardized residuum: |1.6|, Fig. 1)."A correction has been made to one sentence in the Section 4 Discussion. The sentence previously stated: "The results led to higher WQ scores for CCC farms in five of the 11 Criteria for calves, three of the 11 Criteria for heifers, two of the four Principles for calves and one of the four Principles for heifers and a higher overall classification for CCC farms for both calves and heifers."The corrected sentence appears below: "The results led to higher WQ scores for CCC farms in five of the 11 Criteria for calves, four of the 11 Criteria for heifers, three of the four Principles for calves and one of the four Principles for heifers and a higher overall classification for calves for CCC farms."
Keywords: Cattle, dam-calf contact, dairy calves, Dairy heifers, Behavior, Health, Welfare assessment, Foster cow
Received: 11 Nov 2025; Accepted: 14 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Rademann, Schneider and Waiblinger. 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: Anna Rademann, anna.rademann@vetmeduni.ac.at
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