Maternal deprivation affects goat kids' stress coping behaviour

Area of Science:

• Animal Behavior
• Animal Husbandry
• Developmental Biology

Background:

• Maternal deprivation in early life can negatively impact neonate development.
• Separating young animals from dams is common in dairy farming, despite potential developmental disruptions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the effects of different rearing conditions on goat kids' stress coping abilities.
• To compare behavioral responses to novelty and human interaction between dam-reared and artificially-reared goat kids.

Main Methods:

• Twenty dam-reared and twenty artificially-reared female goat kids were studied.
• Behavioral tests included novel arena, novel goat, and novel object tests.
• Human-animal relationship tests were conducted post-weaning.

Main Results:

• Artificially-reared kids showed increased vocalization, rearing, running, and jumping, with less self-grooming and urination.
• Artificially-reared kids initiated contact faster and gazed less at novel stimuli.
• No significant difference in salivary cortisol response was observed, but artificially-reared kids showed less human avoidance post-weaning.

Conclusions:

• Artificial rearing, likely due to maternal deprivation, alters goat kids' behavioral responses to stressful situations, leading to more active reactions.
• The observed changes suggest a general modification in stress response rather than a specific social response alteration.
• Rearing conditions significantly influence the development of stress coping mechanisms in goat kids.