Welfare as a dynamic process: fast and slow adaptation in dairy cows following relocation to an enriched enclosure

The positive welfare movement focuses on promoting rewarding experiences that enhance animals' quality of life beyond simply preventing negative states. Importantly, welfare is dynamic, and positive experiences can emerge on different timescales without necessarily translating into sustained improvements in overall well-being. Here, we introduce a time-aware, multidimensional approach to quantify how welfare-related measures evolve following relocation to an enriched, socially housed setting. We hypothesised that cows would show hedonic-treadmill-like habituation, in which an initial response to the new environment gradually attenuates over time, paralleling habituation patterns documented in humans. Because welfare spans multiple domains, including physiological, behavioural, and social, we expected this process to unfold across multiple timescales. Thirty-six lactating Holstein cows, housed in six independent groups, were relocated from their home pens to an enriched small group enclosure and monitored continuously for 14 days. We integrated high-resolution real-time location tracking with physiological sampling (plasma cortisol), production metrics, and behavioural indicators of activity, space use, and resource use, yielding 86 quantitative measures across four postrelocation epochs. The findings revealed four distinct temporal motifs: transient, biphasic, monotonic, and stable. Transient measures, such as milk fat content, exploration, and time near the salt lick, showed a significant change only in the first epoch before stabilising in subsequent epochs, reflecting a brief response to the initial transition. Biphasic measures, including plasma cortisol, rumination time, and lying duration, shifted rapidly immediately after relocation, then exhibited a slower opposing shift over subsequent epochs that overshot and stabilised within the observation window. Monotonic measures, including milk yield, walking distance, and time near the feed bunk, changed gradually in a single direction across epochs. Stable measures, such as BW, time near the brush, and number of lying bouts, showed no significant change across the study period. Beyond these individual-level motifs, social measures derived from dyadic movement coordination revealed a time-dependent reorganisation of cohesion, with stronger coordination among previously co-housed pairs early after relocation and increasing similarity among age-matched pairs later in the study. Together, these results show that welfare-relevant indicators respond on distinct timescales after a combined transition that includes enrichment, novelty, and regrouping, highlighting the value of continuous monitoring for separating transient from sustained components and motivating time-aware enrichment strategies aimed at maintaining engagement over time.