Validation of 1-0 and instantaneous sampling for quantifying oral behaviors in milk-fed dairy calves

Oral behaviors, including feeding, drinking, grooming, and non-nutritive behaviors, are used as indicators of health and welfare in dairy calves, but continuous measurement of these behaviors can be labor intensive. Instantaneous sampling is often used to save labor but has only been validated for feeding behavior in calves. One-zero sampling may be an appropriate strategy well suited to capturing the rapid performance of non-nutritive behaviors. Our objective was to validate 1-0 and instantaneous sampling for measurement of oral behaviors around the time of bottle delivery against true values. Eleven Holstein heifer calves were housed individually, provided water and fed a diet of starter grain and milk replacer (4.8 – 5.6 L/d step-up) via a bottle. When calves were 23 ± 7 d old, they were video recorded for 30 min before and after the morning 2.5 ± 0.2 L milk meal from approximately 0900 – 1000 h. We measured ruminating, eating, drinking water, sucking milk, grooming, non-nutritive or..., Methodological details are described in the associated journal article as well as RMarkdown.
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This Dryad entry also includes Supplemental Figures S1-S4.