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Abstract

It is a common practice to have full illumination day and night in AM barns. It is however questioned whether cows prefer/need guiding light/darkness during night hours, and if that will affect the daily rhythm of the herd. The aim was to investigate if dairy cows actively choose light or dark area for resting during night hours. The study was conducted in an AMS research barn with 4 rows of cubicles. The resting area of the barn was divided into 2 identical sections by screening between the two central rows of cubicles and towards the feeding area and milking unit, but the passages remained unaffected. One half of the resting area had full lighting (app. 200 lux), while the other had guiding light (5 – 7 lux) from 23:00h to 05:00h. After 3 weeks the lighting in the two sections was reversed. Study periods with full illumination before and after the experimental periods was included. Manual identification of every cow in the resting area and registration of her localisation and her occupation was performed every 12:th minute during 48 consecutive hours in each experimental period. The results of the studies did not reveal obvious preference for a special side because of the illumination. The conclusions of the study is that:1) no difference between full lighting or guided light could be seen on herd level; 2) number of milkings were not affected; 3) cows did not change their resting periods; 4) individual preference of full lighting or guided light could be observed, but was not due to ranking order

Published in

Annual meeting of the European Association for Animal Production
2003, volume: 9, pages: 200
Title: Book of abstracts of the 54th Annual meeting of the European Association for Animal Production
Publisher: Wageningen Academic Publishers

Conference

54th Annual Meeting of the European Association for Animal production

SLU Authors

UKÄ Subject classification

Animal and Dairy Science
Veterinary Science

Publication identifier

  • ISBN: 90-76998-20-5

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/1565