{"title":"Invited review: A systematic review of the effects of pair housing on dairy calf welfare and productivity.","authors":"Katarína Bučková, Ágnes Moravcsíková, Radka Šárová","doi":"10.3168/jds.2024-26251","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Individual housing of dairy calves has received criticism due to animal welfare concerns. Therefore, it is important to provide researchers and practitioners with accurate and reliable scientific knowledge on alternative housing systems for dairy calves. Our objective was to critically evaluate the scientific knowledge on pair-housed dairy calves. The outcomes investigated were the performance, behavior, reactivity to stress, health, learning abilities, and emotional states of pair-housed calves. Primary research articles were found through targeted Web of Science, ScienceDirect, PubMed, and Agricola searches. Studies were included if peer-reviewed, published in English, based upon original data, and pair-housed calves were compared with individually housed calves. After applying the inclusion criteria, 48 articles were left. Most articles did not report differences in behavior of individually and pair-housed calves. Few exceptions included social behavior, behavioral reaction to husbandry procedures, and behavior in the human approach test. Social behavior tended to be better developed in pair-housed calves, which also showed more flexible behavioral reactions to several husbandry procedures. However, pair-housed calves interacted less with a human in the human approach test. We found no consistent evidence of impaired health or improved productivity, learning abilities, and emotional states in pair-housed calves. In conclusion, pair housing provides calves with more benefits than individual housing and improves or does not affect variables of a high value to the producer. We encourage research on longer-term effects of pair housing, such as social behavior or productivity of dairy cows, because the number of long-term studies is limited.</p>","PeriodicalId":354,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Dairy Science","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.4000,"publicationDate":"2025-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Dairy Science","FirstCategoryId":"97","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3168/jds.2024-26251","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"AGRICULTURE, DAIRY & ANIMAL SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Individual housing of dairy calves has received criticism due to animal welfare concerns. Therefore, it is important to provide researchers and practitioners with accurate and reliable scientific knowledge on alternative housing systems for dairy calves. Our objective was to critically evaluate the scientific knowledge on pair-housed dairy calves. The outcomes investigated were the performance, behavior, reactivity to stress, health, learning abilities, and emotional states of pair-housed calves. Primary research articles were found through targeted Web of Science, ScienceDirect, PubMed, and Agricola searches. Studies were included if peer-reviewed, published in English, based upon original data, and pair-housed calves were compared with individually housed calves. After applying the inclusion criteria, 48 articles were left. Most articles did not report differences in behavior of individually and pair-housed calves. Few exceptions included social behavior, behavioral reaction to husbandry procedures, and behavior in the human approach test. Social behavior tended to be better developed in pair-housed calves, which also showed more flexible behavioral reactions to several husbandry procedures. However, pair-housed calves interacted less with a human in the human approach test. We found no consistent evidence of impaired health or improved productivity, learning abilities, and emotional states in pair-housed calves. In conclusion, pair housing provides calves with more benefits than individual housing and improves or does not affect variables of a high value to the producer. We encourage research on longer-term effects of pair housing, such as social behavior or productivity of dairy cows, because the number of long-term studies is limited.
由于对动物福利的担忧,奶牛的个体住房受到了批评。因此,为研究人员和从业人员提供准确可靠的关于奶牛饲养系统的科学知识是非常重要的。我们的目标是批判性地评估成对饲养的奶牛小牛的科学知识。调查的结果是成对饲养的小牛的表现、行为、对压力的反应、健康、学习能力和情绪状态。主要研究文章是通过Web of Science、ScienceDirect、PubMed和Agricola搜索找到的。研究纳入同行评审,以英文发表,基于原始数据,并将成对饲养的小牛与单独饲养的小牛进行比较。应用纳入标准后,还剩下48篇。大多数文章没有报道单独饲养和成对饲养的小牛在行为上的差异。少数例外包括社会行为、对饲养程序的行为反应和人类接近试验中的行为。在成对饲养的小牛中,社会行为倾向于更好地发展,它们对几种饲养程序也表现出更灵活的行为反应。然而,在人类接近测试中,成对饲养的小牛与人类的互动较少。我们没有发现一致的证据表明成对饲养的小牛的健康受损或生产力、学习能力和情绪状态有所改善。总而言之,对犊牛的成对饲养比单独饲养更有利,对生产者来说,对高价值的变量有改善或没有影响。我们鼓励研究成对居住的长期影响,如社会行为或奶牛的生产力,因为长期研究的数量有限。
期刊介绍:
The official journal of the American Dairy Science Association®, Journal of Dairy Science® (JDS) is the leading peer-reviewed general dairy research journal in the world. JDS readers represent education, industry, and government agencies in more than 70 countries with interests in biochemistry, breeding, economics, engineering, environment, food science, genetics, microbiology, nutrition, pathology, physiology, processing, public health, quality assurance, and sanitation.