DOI: 10.25338/b8z052
title: Data from: Providing long hay in a novel pipe feeder or a bucket reduces some, but not all abnormal oral behaviors in milk-fed dairy calves

description: Many milk-fed dairy calves are not provided forage. In these settings,
 calves often perform abnormal repetitive behaviors (ARBs), including
 tongue rolling and nonnutritive oral manipulation (NNOM), that, based on
 their form, seem similar to movements used when processing feed. Feeding
 hay, typically presented as a short chop (≤5 cm) in a bucket, reduces
 ARBs. Our objective was to evaluate whether altering the presentation
 method of long hay (approx. 19 cm), by providing it in a bucket or a novel
 polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe feeder, could reduce ARBs. Holstein heifer
 calves were housed individually on sand and fed ad-libitum starter grain
 and limited milk replacer (5.7-8.4 L/d step-up) via a bottle (Control,
 n=9) or given access to mountaingrass hay in a bucket (Bucket, n=9) or in
 a PVC pipe feeder (Pipe, n=9). The 56 x 10.2 cm (length x diameter) PVC
 pipe feeder had four 6.4 cm-wide openings that required the calf to insert
 her tongue into the pipe and curl her tongue to extract hay. Treatments
 were applied from birth through 50 d of age, when step-down weaning began
 and TMR was provided to all calves. Calves were fully weaned at d 60. At
 wk 4 and 6, oral behaviors (eating, ruminating, drinking water, sucking
 milk, self-grooming, NNOM, tongue rolling, tongue flicking, and panting)
 were recorded by direct observation for 24 h using 1-0 sampling during 5-s
 intervals. Feeding long hay, regardless of presentation method, increased
 overall DMI, grain intake, and ADG compared to Control calves. Hay
 provision also increased rumination (25% vs. 15% of 24-h observations in
 Control) and eating time (5.5% vs. 2% in Control). Abnormal behaviors were
 seen in all calves. Hay provision reduced some of these, including NNOM
 (5% vs. 9% in Control). There was no difference in NNOM between calves fed
 hay in a pipe or bucket, even though Bucket calves ate more hay (178 vs.
 129 g/d in wk 6) and tended to spend more observations eating hay than
 Pipe calves (4.5% vs. 3%). Hay provision did not affect other behaviors:
 drinking water (0.5%), grooming (3%), or tongue flicking (3%). We also
 found evidence of other abnormal oral behaviors that have received less
 attention. Calves showed signs of polydipsia, and displayed excessive
 grooming, the latter indicated by overall duration, number of bouts per
 day, and duration of individual bouts (up to 25 min). Tongue rolling was
 expressed at low levels (up to 0.4% of intervals) but by 85% of calves.
 Feeding hay, both in a bucket and using novel methods, was not enough to
 counteract the welfare challenges associated with individual housing and
 limited ability to suck milk (&lt;1% of time). Provision of long hay,
 regardless of presentation method, promotes rumination, improves
 performance (higher grain intake and ADG) and reduces at least some, but
 not all, of the considerable abnormal oral behaviors these calves
 performed.
description: Please see the associated manuscript for details.
description: Supplemental
 material: The supplemental materials in
 this section are referenced in the corresponding paper, and provide
 additional information and context for the experiment’s design and
 results. Raw data, RMarkdown files, and tables are presented as
 proportions, which is how the data were analyzed. RMarkdown files that
 produce figures convert these proportions to percentages, and the
 corresponding manuscript similarly converts all proportions to percentages
 to improve readability. <strong>Supplemental
 tables and figures:</strong>
 <em>Supplemental Tables and
 Figures.pdf</em> 
 <em>Supplemental Table S1. Feed and ADG model outputs</em>:
 Model outputs for feed (grain, hay, and TMR) intake and water intake in
 the preweaning and weaning periods, and average daily gain (ADG) during
 the preweaning period. <em>Supplemental Table
 S2. Behavior model outputs</em>: Back-transformed model-predicted
 means (using type = “<em>response</em>” in emmeans in R), SE,
 and 95% CI for all oral behaviors scored, along with model
 outputs. <em>Supplemental Figure
 S1</em>: Bucket and pipe set up for Control (left), Bucket (middle),
 and Pipe (right) treatments. Control calves had grain, water, and empty
 buckets (left to right and an empty pipe feeder; Bucket calves had grain,
 water, and hay buckets (left to right) and an empty pipe feeder; Pipe
 calves had grain, water, and empty buckets (left to right) and a hay pipe
 feeder. Perforated rubber mats placed on top of sand bedding for newborn
 calves (d 0-5) are seen in the middle and right photos. All treatments had
 access to buckets and pipes beginning on d 0. At the start of step-down
 weaning (50-60 d), TMR was provided for Control and Pipe calves in the
 empty bucket (right) and for Hay calves in place of hay
 (right). <em>Supplemental Figure
 S2</em>: Starter grain fed to all treatments (left; Starter Calf
 Feed 901033, Associated Feed and Supply Co.), and long chop (~19 cm) of
 mountaingrass hay fed to Bucket and Pipe treatment calves
 (right). <em>Supplemental Figure
 S3</em>: Instructions for creating PVC pipe feeders.
 <em>Supplemental Figure S4</em>: Overall percentage
 of 24-h observations spent drinking water in weeks 4 and 6 compared to
 amount of water consumed on the corresponding day. Each point represents
 an individual calf. <em>Supplemental Figure
 S5</em>: Overall percentage of 24-h observations engaged in tongue
 rolling in weeks 4 and 6. Each colored line represents an individual
 calf. <em>Supplemental Figure S6</em>:
 Percentage of time engaged in tongue rolling in weeks 4 and 6 by
 individual calf averaged over 15-min bins in a 24-h day. Each colored line
 represents a different calf. Dashed lines represent milk feedings, which
 occurred at 0930 and 1630 h. 
 <strong>Videos:</strong> Short
 videos illustrating ruminating, eating grain, eating hay, sucking milk,
 drinking water, grooming, NNOM: Other, tongue flicks, tongue rolling, and
 panting are available via <em>Downey</em>, <em>Blair
 Caitlin</em>, <em>Jensen</em>, <em>Margit
 Bak</em>, & <em>Tucker</em>, <em>Cassandra
 Blaine</em>. (<em>2022</em>). <em>Data
 from</em>: <em>Hay provision affects 24-h performance of
 normal and abnormal oral behaviors in dairy calves</em>.
 <em>Zenodo</em>. <em>https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6267257</em> Additional videos are provided here. These videos show what eating hay from the pipe feeder looked like: a calf feeding in real time (Video 1), a calf feeding in slow motion (Video 2), a calf feeding by biting and pulling hay out (Video 3), and a video of a non-trial heifer using the pipe from the side to show what tongue movements inside the pipe looked like (Video 4). Another video demonstrates an example of what the behavior “NNOM: Pipe” looked like (Video 5). <strong>Raw data and code:</strong> This section includes the data and code used for this paper. All data in this section were collected from 27 calves fed a standard diet of grain, milk, and water (Control treatment, n=9) with additional access to ~19-cm hay in a bucket (Bucket treatment, n=9) or a PVC pipe feeder (Pipe treatment, n=9) from birth until weaning at 60 d. The column “Age_days” reflects the calf’s age when the intake was recorded, while “Date” reflects the exact date of intake or body weight measurement. “Week” corresponds to the calf’s age in days (i.e. 1-6 days = week 0, 7-13 days = week 1, etc.). Data: <em>FEiC_Behavior proportion data.csv</em>: Proportion of time engaged in oral behaviors (drinking water, eating grain, eating hay, eating, grooming, panting, NNOM: Pipe, NNOM: Other, NNOM: Total, ruminating, sucking milk, tongue flicks, and tongue rolling) generated from 1-0 sampling at 5-s intervals for a continuous 24-h day at weeks 4 and 6 of life. The column labeled “Eating” is “eating.grain" + “eating.hay” combined while “NNOM: Total” is “NNOM.pipe” + “NNOM.other.” <em>FEiC_Grooming bout data.csv</em>: Consecutive grooming bouts generated from 1-0 sampling at 5-s intervals for a continuous 24-h day at weeks 4 and 6 of life. The column “Duration_5s_intervals” indicates the number of 5-s intervals that grooming occurred in. For example, a duration of 3 = three 5-s intervals, or approximately a 15-s bout. <em>FEiC_Feed intake data.xlsx</em>: The “Grain intake” sheet includes daily intake of starter grain in grams (g) from birth through the end of weaning at 60 d. The “Hay intake” sheet includes daily intake of hay in grams (g) from birth through the start of weaning at 50 d. The “TMR intake” sheet includes daily intake of TMR in grams (g) through the weaning period (50-60 d). The “Water intake” sheet includes daily intake of water in liters (L) from birth through the end of weaning at 60 d. For grain, hay, and TMR, the column labeled “[feed type]_consumed_dried_g” indicates that these values have been converted to a dry matter basis (see paper methods for more information about this weekly feed sampling). For all solid feed and water, NAs reflect instances where 24h intake could not be reliably captured, e.g. because of fecal contamination in the bucket, spillage, negative intake values, or lack of DM conversion. The sheet “Water intake vs. drinking time” includes water intake on the day of each 24h observation for each calf. <em>FEiC_Weekly calf weights and ADG.xlsx</em>: “Weekly calf weights” sheet presents weights for calves obtained via a scale at d 0, then weekly, that were used to determine preweaning average daily gain (ADG), ADG across the full trial, and final weight differences. The second tab of this sheet shows only ADG by calf (produced by the corresponding .Rmd script, but also included here). In this sheet, “ADG_kg/d” reflects kg/d difference from the last recorded weight for each calf. NAs are present on d 0 for all calves for “ADG_kg/d” as this was their first recorded weight (birthweight) and thus gain over time could not be calculated. RMarkdown code: All codes in this section use the data files listed above to build and validate models to describe effects of treatment (Control, Bucket, Pipe) and time (Week or Day) on behavior, feed intake, and ADG, and/or produce the figures used in the corresponding paper. Rmd files can be downloaded and run in R, or downloaded and viewed via the pdf output, which includes the code and output previews. Both versions are annotated. <em>FEiC_Average daily gain models (pdf and .Rmd)</em> <em>FEiC_Feed intake data models and figures (pdf and .Rmd)</em> <em>FEiC_Behavior models and boxplots (pdf and .Rmd)</em> <em>FEiC_Repetitive grooming bout analysis and figure (pdf and .Rmd)</em>