DOI: 10.25338/b8hw4m
title: Data from: Measuring behavior patterns and evaluating time sampling methodology to characterize brush use in weaned beef cattle

description: With growing interest in provision of brushes to cattle, and implications
 of brush use for behavioral development and welfare, there is a need to
 validate methodology for quantifying grooming behavior. Our objectives
 were to characterize patterns of brush use, including bouts, diurnal
 activity, and individual variability over 24-h periods and to validate
 time sampling methodologies to characterize these traits, including
 instantaneous recording at various time intervals and continuous recording
 for subsets of the day. Data sets from previous experiments involving
 steers (Experiment 1; n = 18) and heifers (Experiment 2; n = 64),
 consisting of start and end times of brush use continuously recorded from
 video, were used to analyze brush use. We extrapolated data sets
 representative of a range of instantaneous recording intervals and
 compared daily brush duration and bout characteristics with corresponding
 values from continuous recording using linear regression. To assess
 validity of sampling subsets of the day, we selected 2-h time periods
 representative of different functional parts of the day and compared
 hourly brush rates with continuous data using Spearman’s rank order
 correlation. Brush use was variable among individuals. All steers used the
 brush in Experiment 1, but 17 % (n = 11 of 64) of heifers in Experiment 2
 did not. Bout analysis revealed that individuals that used the brush for,
 on average 7 to 8 brush bouts, lasting 4 to 6 min, leading to an average
 of 24 and 36 min/day for Experiment 1 and 2, respectively. Cattle used the
 brush mainly during daylight hours, with peaks around sunrise, sunset, and
 the afternoon. Instantaneous recording at intervals less than 1-3 min,
 depending on the experiment, provided good estimates of daily brush use
 duration (R2 &gt; 0.95 and slope and intercept not different from 1
 and 0, respectively) with intervals &gt; 3 min being less reliable.
 For bout characteristics, the intercept of the modeled line differed from
 0 for most recording intervals for both experiments, and the slope
 differed from 1 for recording intervals greater than 30 s in Experiment 1,
 suggesting that time sampling may be underestimating true values. Of the
 2-h periods compared to 24 h of observation, 1800-2000 h was most highly
 correlated (rs = 0.84) for Experiment 1, and 1800-2000 and 1400-1600 were
 the most highly correlated (rs = 0.71 and 0.74, respectively) for
 Experiment 2 with daily values. When using time sampling methods to
 characterize brush use, we suggest that the recording interval used and
 time of day observed should be carefully considered, as time sampling at
 an interval of 1-3 min may measure daily brush use duration, but
 continuous recording may be required to capture bout characteristics.
description: Please see related manuscript
description: Data were collected at the University of California Davis. In the
 Excel file, there is a directory of spreadsheets "Spreadsheet
 description" and of the headings and variables used throughout
 "Heading description". The SAS script used to analyze each
 dataset is provided.