Producer perceptions of dairy calf management, behavior, and welfare.

Approaches for raising calves vary across commercial dairy farms and relate to behavioral opportunities and animal welfare. The objectives of this study were to evaluate how US dairy producers and calf managers perceive (1) the welfare implications of varying management practices (including social housing and milk allowance) and behaviors in dairy calves, and (2) aspects of the human-animal relationship in calf rearing and relationships with on-farm management and personal calf handling habits. Survey questions were primarily quantitative (e.g., Likert scales) and addressed how common calf management practices and observed calf behaviors were related to aspects of welfare, including calf health and comfort. We additionally posed questions addressing respondent habits, management protocols, and perceptions related to human-animal interaction. Responses from 93 dairy producers and calf managers were collected via digital surveys. Social housing was viewed as being generally positive for both calf comfort and health, although this view was stronger with respect to calf comfort. Respondents from farms using social housing (56%) had more positive perceptions of social housing, viewed social play as being associated with better calf comfort and health, and considered access to other calves and "freedom to express natural behavior" as being more important for calves, compared with respondents from farms not providing social housing. Providing greater milk allowances (>7.6 L/d) was viewed as being good for both calf comfort and health, although respondents from farms providing these milk allowances (59%) had more positive perceptions than those who provided lesser allowances. Abnormal oral behaviors were viewed as being associated with both poor calf comfort and health. The welfare importance of various resources which may reduce abnormal oral behaviors (including hay and brushes) was perceived more ambiguously, although respondents from farms providing these resources, compared with those who do not, generally viewed them as more preferred by calves. We observed a positive relationship between how respondents perceived the human-animal bond (i.e., that calves enjoy contact with humans) and stated personal behavior related to calf contact (frequency of contacting calves to scratch or pet them). Respondent demographics were not related to perceptions of the human-animal relationship, but respondents identifying as female described more frequent positive calf interactions. Described aspects of human-animal interactions were not related to implementation of social housing on-farm. Job satisfaction was positively related to perception of the human-animal relationship. Overall, these results suggest that most calf management personnel place a high value on calf welfare, although farms implementing social housing appear to place a greater value on subjective calf well-being, and individual perceptions of animal welfare may depend on practical experience.

Individual and environmental factors associated with defecation while lying down in dairy cows.

Cows typically defecate while standing. Freestalls are designed to position standing cows such that their feces fall into the alley. Cows sometimes defecate while lying down, increasing the risk that feces contaminate the stall surface. We conducted 2 studies investigating cow-level and environmental factors associated with defecating while recumbent. In experiment 1, we hypothesized that conditions making it more difficult for cows to stand up (including greater age, high body weight, pregnancy, and lameness) would increase the risk of this behavior. We followed 92 cows for 12 d, scanning stalls 5 times/d using live observation. Almost half (48%) of all cows defecated while recumbent at least once; cows that spent more time lying down and that were earlier in gestation were at highest risk. Weight, parity, age, and lameness were not associated with this behavior. In experiment 2, we tested how overstocking influenced the occurrence of defecating while recumbent. We predicted overstocking would increase the occurrence of this behavior, especially when cows were in stalls at more preferred locations. We recorded stall occupancy, displacement attempts, and defecating while recumbent in 4 groups of 36 cows tested at both 100% and 150% lying stall stocking densities for 2 nights each using a crossover design. Overstocking resulted in higher stall use and more displacements, but less lying and fewer perching events. We did not detect any relationship between use of specific stalls or competition and defecating while recumbent. Most recorded displacements were associated with perching. Increased time perching increased the likelihood of defecating while recumbent, perhaps because perching cows were less dominant or more reluctant to stand up once lying down in the stall. Overstocking did not increase defecating while recumbent, likely because cows spent less time lying down. Together, these results indicate that defecating while recumbent can be common, and points to some of the cow-level factors associated with this behavior.

The validation of a serious game for teaching ultrasound skills.

BACKGROUND: Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is an important bedside diagnostic tool and is being taught in several specialties. However, mastering the required psychomotor skills takes time and learning curves are different between students. Especially learning to make the right probe movements with the corresponding changes of the ultrasound image on screen, and integrating it into a 3D mental model takes time. This precious bedside-time of trainers and physicians may be reduced using other learning methods for mastering the psychomotor skills, for example the use of serious games. Such a game is under development but it needs to be validated before widespread use can be advised. In this article we describe the development and the first three steps in the validation of a serious game for ultrasound skills. RESULTS: We have included 18 ultrasound experts and 24 ultrasound novices who played the serious game 'Underwater" and provided feedback. They concluded that "underwater" is fun to play and that movement of the 3D-printed probe resembled real ultrasound probe movements. Participants highly valued the potential of the game for training eye-hand coordination and stability of probe handling, two very important skills in performing ultrasound in real practice. Although we compared several in-game parameters such as distance and speed, no difference was observed between novices and experts. This means that content- and face validity of the serious game is demonstrated but optimal parameters to measure differences between novices and experts still have to be determined. CONCLUSIONS: Our study shows solid content- and face validity of the serious game "UnderWater" for training ultrasound skills, although construct validity could not be demonstrated yet. The game is appreciated as a promising serious game for training eye-hand coordination and learning ultrasound, which may reduce expensive bed-side teaching.

Artificial midline-fascia of the human abdominal wall for testing suture strength.

To reduce testing of human abdominal wall closure-modalities in test animals, a fibre reinforced rubber with identical mechanical properties compared to the human midline fascia (linea alba: LA) was developed. The microscopic structure of the human LA, stress-strain behaviour, maximum tensile force and macroscopic failure mechanism in tensile tests with human LA were defined as indicators for the required properties of the fibre reinforced rubber. A composite consisting of latex rubber and cotton fibres was developed that shows mechanical properties comparable to the human abdominal wall. The results of the tensile tests on sutured artificial LA were highly similar to those performed on sutured human LA. The material presented in this study is proposed as a substitute for human and animal tissues presently used to test suture techniques. A protocol for an approach to develop artificial fibrous soft tissue like fascie and tendon was drawn up.