Gentle touching in early life reduces avoidance distance and slaughter stress in beef cattle

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Abstract

This study investigated the effect of gentle touching applied during the early life of suckler beef calves on avoidance distance on-farm and stress reactions at the abattoir. Twenty-seven Limousin crossbred calves were assigned to a treatment (n = 13) or a control group (n = 14) balanced by sex and day of birth. Gentle touching, using the TTouch© method, began on the second day post partum and was continued on the following 2 days. Additional touching was conducted on 3 non-consecutive days during the following 3 weeks in the home pen. Each treatment lasted for 10 min and was repeated once after 30 min. Individual avoidance distance was assessed 6 times. Following this test, all voluntary approaches towards the test person were recorded. All animals were slaughtered at 10 months of age. Behaviour was observed during lairage and in the stunning chute. Blood samples were taken during exsanguination at the abattoir, and concentrations of cortisol, lactate and glucose were analysed. Samples of the Musculus longissimus dorsi were subjected to cooking loss measurements, Warner Bratzler shear force and meat colour traits. The treatment calves showed smaller avoidance distances (P < 0.001) than the control calves. The treatment cattle showed less avoidance behaviour in the stunning box (P < 0.01), and the cortisol level of the touched animals tended to be lower (P = 0.055). The Warner Bratzler shear force of the cooked muscle was lower in the touched than in the control animals (P < 0.05). In conclusion, the treatment animals were less fearful towards humans and showed less stress-related behaviour at the abattoir. Fewer stress related reactions at the abattoir can be the reason for improved tenderness of touched animals’ meat. We conclude that early gentle touching of beef cattle has long-term persistent effects, reduces fear towards humans, and may increase meat quality.

Introduction

The relationship between humans and animals is closely related to several animal welfare aspects. Fear of humans can result in stress and thus decreased health and productivity in farm animals (Waiblinger et al., 2006, Hemsworth, 2003, Breuer et al., 2000). Over the last decades, the number of animals per stockperson has increased and, consequently, the time spent per animal has decreased. In particular, suckler beef cattle are usually kept in loose-housing or extensive outdoor grazing systems with low management input and limited human contact. This situation promotes the expression of fear towards humans (Boissy and Bouissou, 1988) and makes handling, especially of the dams, more difficult and sometimes dangerous (Grandin, 1999). A lack of human contact in early life is especially connected with this defence behaviour (Le Neindre et al., 1996) likewise to bad experiences for the young animals related to human handling. Several routine husbandry practices, such as ear tagging, dehorning, castrating, and medical treatments, are likely triggering aversive responses by the animals (Raussi, 2003) and are considered to affect animal welfare negatively (Boissy et al., 2005).

Especially Limousin cattle are supposed to be excitable to human handling (Gregory, 2008, Boivin et al., 1994) and have been found to be less easy to handle than Angus cattle (Vanderwert et al., 1985). Additionally, these authors as well as Boivin et al. (1994) reported that aggressiveness towards humans could have a genetic basis. In cattle, temperament is defined as the individual fear response or reactivity to (human) handling or novel surroundings (Fordyce et al., 1988). Cattle with an excitable temperament show increased stress responsiveness to handling (Curley et al., 2008) and had therefore increased responses to a stressful situation and higher basal concentrations of glucocorticoids than calmer counterparts (King et al., 2006). Accordingly, calmer cattle, or cattle that are less fearful to novel situations seem to cope better with routine handling compared to highly agitated animals (Müller and von Keyserlingk, 2006).

However, there are enough evidences for possibility to habituate cattle to human handling (Hemsworth et al., 1996, Petherick et al., 2009a). A habituation to contact with humans (‘human handling’) increases tameness (dairy calves: Uetake et al., 2003), reduces stress reactions (cattle: Goonewardene et al., 1999; lambs: Hargreaves and Hutson, 1990) and fearfulness towards people (cattle: Petherick et al., 2009a, Petherick et al., 2009b), and results in easy manageable animals (crossbred zebu calves: Becker and Lobato, 1997). A positive handling or touching by humans is particularly effective when it takes place during ‘sensitive’ periods (Boissy and Bouissou, 1988), and it reduces stress in future life (Grandin, 1997, Boivin et al., 1994). For calves, Jago et al. (1999) described the days after birth as a sensitive period for handling to achieve a positive human–animal relationship. The persistence of such early handling can be assessed by the avoidance distance test because this test well reflects the status of the human–animal relationship (Waiblinger et al., 2003) and the level of fear towards humans (Dodzi and Muchenje, 2011).

One of the most stressful procedures in livestock is pre-slaughter handling (Cockram and Corley, 1991). Animals are subjected to several stressors which cause severe behavioural and physiological responses (Warriss, 1990). Cattle react to stressful settings (e.g., at the abattoir) with increased concentrations of cortisol compared with stress-free situations. The release of glucocorticoids and catecholamines as a result of fear and agitation can lead to rapid glycolysis and increased lactate production, resulting in elevated blood lactate (Shaw and Tume, 1992). Therefore, glucose and lactate are often used in addition to cortisol to assess stress-linked reactions (see Petherick et al., 2009b, for review) as these indicators rapidly respond to stressors. Hemsworth et al. (2011) showed an increase in post-slaughter cortisol concentrations in cattle that were correlated with increased prodding by stockmen. Accordingly, lactate level has been used as an indicator of physical stress and tiredness occurring during livestock transport (Broom, 2003), and glucose level has been applied as a parameter indicating stressful events (Averós et al., 2008, Apple et al., 2005).

A further indicator for pre-slaughter stress in animals might be impaired meat quality (Ferguson and Warner, 2008), such as a lower water-holding capacity or a reduced tenderness or both. The pre-slaughter reduction of muscle glycogen reserves has an ample effect on various meat quality features such as ultimate pH, colour traits, tenderness and water holding capacity (Gregory, 2003). King et al. (2006) figured out that nervous cattle had much more active stress response mechanisms than calmer ones. Carcasses of agitated cattle were found to have increased occurrence of dark cutting beef and reduced tenderness than their calmer counterparts (Voisinet et al., 1997).

The present study tested the hypothesis that gentle touching of suckler beef calves applied during the first 4 weeks post partum improves animal responses to human–animal interactions on-farm and at the abattoir and that it reduces the stress associated reactions. This effect was assessed by avoidance distance tests and by measuring physiological stress reactions via effects on indicative blood hormone and metabolite levels and meat quality.

Section snippets

Experimental design

Twenty-seven Limousin-crossbred suckler calves (12 male and 15 female) from one farm and kept under the same housing and management conditions were employed in the experiment. The calves were born between March and September. These calves were randomly assigned to either a treatment group (n = 13; 7 females and 6 males) or a control group (n = 14; 8 females and 6 males) balanced by sex and day of birth. The calves were born and ear-tagged on day 1 in separate straw-bedded calving pens, where dam

Avoidance distance test

On pasture, the avoidance distance of the touched calves was significantly smaller than the avoidance distance of the control calves (F1,22 = 4.79, P < 0.05; Fig. 1a). Calves of both groups showed an increase in avoidance distance on pasture of 280 cm on average from the first to the third test repetitions (F1,38 = 40.0, P < 0.001). In the barn (test repetitions b1, b2 and b3), the touched calves again had smaller avoidance distances than control calves (F1,25 = 17.75, P < 0.001; Fig. 1b). The test

Discussion

The present study tested the hypothesis that gentle and standardised touching in early life is advantageous for the behaviour of calves towards humans and at the abattoir, which also results in reduced stress response and a better meat quality. We chose the first 4 weeks post partum for this treatment, and started the treatment on the second day after birth. According to Hudson and Mullord (1977), the first days post partum are an especially critical period during which the mother-infant bonds

Conclusion

Implementing any type of additional touching results in an additional workload, and therefore, the benefits of such efforts have to be clear. One convincing argument would consist in having less fearful animals that are likely to be easy to handle, and another would be improved meat quality, where an economic benefit might be obtained, especially via label programs. In the present study, early tactile touching of suckler calves actually affected their avoidance behaviour towards unfamiliar

Acknowledgements

We thank the Gassmann family from Eschenhof, Dagmersellen (Switzerland), for providing access to their farm, their animals and their excellent support during the experiment. Moreover, we are grateful to Bell AG, Oensingen (Switzerland), for providing meat samples and access to data. We gratefully acknowledge funding of this project by the foundation Philanthropia, Lausanne (Switzerland).

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