Resumo
To cope with the changes imposed by high technology in animal production, farmers must be aware of some strategies to overcome the difficulties, however, they have to pay attention to minimize the impact of stress generated by some handling practices on the development of animals. The aim of this study was to evaluate the adaptation of calves to the handling routine of restricted suckling and their effects on calves performance. The breeding season (with 90 days of duration) was carried out for 50 Bos indicus calved cows (Nellore and Guzerath purebreds), and two bulls (Guzerath). The cows and their calves were randomly allocated into two treatments: permanent suckling (PS) cow and calf remained together all the day and; restricted suckling (RS) - they remained together during only 7 hours per day. For the RS group, during the first ten days of the breeding season, the time taken to apart the dyad (TA) was recorded, and was performed a 30 min. behavioral observation, recording the suckling frequency (SF). The thoracic girth was used as indicator of calves development, being measured at the beginning (time 0) and final of breeding season (90 days) The differences of time to apart and suckling frequency over the 10 days of assessment were analyzed by the Friedman test (with Bonferroni correction), followed by linear (for TA) and quadratic regression analysis (for SF). Mann-Whi
O artigo não apresenta resumo em português.
Resumo
To cope with the changes imposed by high technology in animal production, farmers must be aware of some strategies to overcome the difficulties, however, they have to pay attention to minimize the impact of stress generated by some handling practices on the development of animals. The aim of this study was to evaluate the adaptation of calves to the handling routine of restricted suckling and their effects on calves performance. The breeding season (with 90 days of duration) was carried out for 50 Bos indicus calved cows (Nellore and Guzerath purebreds), and two bulls (Guzerath). The cows and their calves were randomly allocated into two treatments: permanent suckling (PS) cow and calf remained together all the day and; restricted suckling (RS) - they remained together during only 7 hours per day. For the RS group, during the first ten days of the breeding season, the time taken to apart the dyad (TA) was recorded, and was performed a 30 min. behavioral observation, recording the suckling frequency (SF). The thoracic girth was used as indicator of calves development, being measured at the beginning (time 0) and final of breeding season (90 days) The differences of time to apart and suckling frequency over the 10 days of assessment were analyzed by the Friedman test (with Bonferroni correction), followed by linear (for TA) and quadratic regression analysis (for SF). Mann-Whi
O artigo não apresenta resumo em português.