The effect of space allowance on drinking and resting behaviour in six months of age calves

The aim of this paper was to measure the main aspects that characterize the drinking and resting behaviour in six months old calves using two different resting and drinking space allowance. During the experiments the following drinking and resting behaviour aspects were determined: number of drinking periods, the length of one drinking period and the total length of drinking periods, number of resting periods, the length of one resting period and the total length of resting periods. Results showed that calves spent drinking, on average, only 4.8 min in the morning, 3.8 min in the afternoon and 1.2 min during the night, when the area of water troughs was 0.19 m 2 . Calves spent drinking 4.4 min during the morning, 1.8 min during the afternoon and 1.0 min during the night when the area of water troughs was 0.06 m 2 . Calves spent resting 117.0 min during the morning, 214.8 min during the afternoon and 413.8 min during the night, when the area of resting space was 5 m 2 per calf. Calves spent resting 154.4 min during the morning, 217.0 min during the afternoon and 419.0 min during the night when the area of resting space was 2.5 m 2 per calf. The total time spent drinking by calves in 24 hours was 9.6 min when area of water troughs was 0.19 m 2 and 7.2 min when area of water troughs was 0.06 m 2 . The total time spent resting by calves in 24 hours was 750.6 min when the area of resting space was 5 m 2 per calf and 790.4 min when the area of resting space was 5 m 2 per calf. There were no significant differences (p>0.05) for total time spent resting by calves between the two experimental variants.