Changes in daily rhythms of lying behaviour are associated with foot lesions in dairy cattle measured by degree of functional coupling.

Abstract

Early detection of disease in farm animals is key to reducing their impact and behavioural changes may be useful indicators to achieve this. Using daily measures of lying behaviour in cattle has yielded inconsistent association with lameness but the changes in the daily rhythm of this behaviour have not yet been investigated. In this study we leverage an extensive dataset of lying behaviour of 3254 cows from 58 herds to compute the degree of functional coupling (DFC), which represents the synchronicity of the behaviour with the day, and we test for associations with foot lesions, parity, milk production and seasons. We are the first to demonstrate that DFC values serve as an early indicator of lameness as the odds of a high DFC value are lower when a lesion is present (OR = 0.61, 95 % CI 0.48 - 0.78), indicating altered behavioural rhythm due to pain or discomfort. This effect is also present in cows that would eventually go on to present with a lesion even before their first lesion is present (OR = 0.86, 95 % CI 0.76 - 0.97), suggesting a difference in susceptibility. We show that the odds of a high DFC value, indicating higher behavioural synchronicity, increased with milk production and decreased with parity, in addition to high DFC values being more likely over the summer months. Therefore, the patterns of lying behaviour as measured by DFC can be used to improve early disease detection and provide timely interventions, which would improve farm animal welfare and productivity.