Dalarna University's logo and link to the university's website

du.sePublications
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • chicago-author-date
  • chicago-note-bibliography
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Suckling and allosuckling behavior of dairy calves in indoor dam-rearing systems
Department of Applied Animal Science and Welfare, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala.
Department of Applied Animal Science and Welfare, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala.
Dalarna University, School of Information and Engineering, Computing. Department of Animal Biosciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-1057-5401
Department of Applied Animal Science and Welfare, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala.
Show others and affiliations
2025 (English)In: Frontiers in Veterinary Science, E-ISSN 2297-1769, Vol. 12, article id 1617158Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

An important element in dairy cow-calf contact (CCC) systems is to ensure sufficient milk intake by calves. However, little is known about possible changes in suckling behavior during suckling periods for calves up to 15 weeks old, and the prevalence of allosuckling is poorly understood in the context of these systems. This research had two aims: first, to explore possible changes in suckling behavior as calves aged when housed in an indoor CCC system, and second, to identify calf-level factors associated with allosuckling. Both aims were independently investigated in two separate studies (cow- and calf-driven contact, respectively) and involved both Swedish Red and Swedish Holstein dams and calves. In the cow-driven study, dam-calf pairs (n = 19 male and female calves) had shared access to a separate contact area containing stalls, which dams could leave at any time. In the calf-driven study, calves (n = 24 female calves) could access their dams (n = 23) in all parts of the pen, except the milking area. Behavior sampling from video was used to record suckling behaviors during a 24-h period at average calf ages of 3, 6, 9, 12 (both studies) and 15 (cow-driven only) weeks. In the cow-driven study, calves behaved consistently across all weeks in terms of suckling bout length and frequency. Calves in the calf-driven study took significantly fewer, but longer, suckling bouts as they aged. The overall frequency of allosuckling observed in the cow-driven study (36%) was higher than that in the calf-driven study (14%). However, the odds of allosuckling increased significantly with increasing calf age in both studies. Calves in the cow-driven study were observed to allosuckle even in the presence of their own dam, and increasingly so as they aged. For both studies, instances of allosuckling were over 140 times more likely when other calves were already engaged in suckling on a cow. We conclude that allosuckling is likely to occur in indoor dam-rearing systems when the animals are housed in automatic milking systems, although the frequency will depend on the age of the calves and the presence of other suckling calves.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2025. Vol. 12, article id 1617158
Keywords [en]
calf management, cow-calf contact, cross-suckling, dam-rearing, voluntary milking system
National Category
Animal and Dairy Science
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:du-50995DOI: 10.3389/fvets.2025.1617158ISI: 001540709800001PubMedID: 40746971Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-105012305186OAI: oai:DiVA.org:du-50995DiVA, id: diva2:1987091
Available from: 2025-08-05 Created: 2025-08-05 Last updated: 2025-10-15Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

fulltext(3048 kB)55 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT01.pdfFile size 3048 kBChecksum SHA-512
d523174f245494c5245a88c0a09658ef2b809248780e2f92d913eb8270f867aba36a6610a5d225d1dacfd750675bef5d5047e6935d108f102ba6101c284c8e54
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

Other links

Publisher's full textPubMedScopus

Authority records

Rönnegård, Lars

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Rönnegård, Lars
By organisation
Computing
In the same journal
Frontiers in Veterinary Science
Animal and Dairy Science

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
Total: 56 downloads
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

doi
pubmed
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
pubmed
urn-nbn
Total: 335 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • chicago-author-date
  • chicago-note-bibliography
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf