Data from: Measuring behavior patterns and evaluating time sampling methodology to characterize brush use in weaned beef cattle

With growing interest in provision of brushes to cattle, and implications
of brush use for behavioral development and welfare, there is a need to
validate methodology for quantifying grooming behavior. Our objectives
were to characterize patterns of brush use, including bouts, diurnal
activity, and individual variability over 24-h periods and to validate
time sampling methodologies to characterize these traits, including
instantaneous recording at various time intervals and continuous recording
for subsets of the day. Data sets from previous experiments involving
steers (Experiment 1; n = 18) and heifers (Experiment 2; n = 64),
consisting of start and end times of brush use continuously recorded from
video, were used to analyze brush use. We extrapolated data sets
representative of a range of instantaneous recording intervals and
compared daily brush duration and bout characteristics with corresponding
values from continuous recording using linear regression. To assess
validity of sampling subsets of the day, we selected 2-h time periods
representative of different functional parts of the day and compared
hourly brush rates with continuous data using Spearman’s rank order
correlation. Brush use was variable among individuals. All steers used the
brush in Experiment 1, but 17 % (n = 11 of 64) of heifers in Experiment 2
did not. Bout analysis revealed that individuals that used the brush for,
on average 7 to 8 brush bouts, lasting 4 to 6 min, leading to an average
of 24 and 36 min/day for Experiment 1 and 2, respectively. Cattle used the
brush mainly during daylight hours, with peaks around sunrise, sunset, and
the afternoon. Instantaneous recording at intervals less than 1-3 min,
depending on the experiment, provided good estimates of daily brush use
duration (R2 > 0.95 and slope and intercept not different from 1
and 0, respectively) with intervals > 3 min being less reliable.
For bout characteristics, the intercept of the modeled line differed from
0 for most recording intervals for both experiments, and the slope
differed from 1 for recording intervals greater than 30 s in Experiment 1,
suggesting that time sampling may be underestimating true values. Of the
2-h periods compared to 24 h of observation, 1800-2000 h was most highly
correlated (rs = 0.84) for Experiment 1, and 1800-2000 and 1400-1600 were
the most highly correlated (rs = 0.71 and 0.74, respectively) for
Experiment 2 with daily values. When using time sampling methods to
characterize brush use, we suggest that the recording interval used and
time of day observed should be carefully considered, as time sampling at
an interval of 1-3 min may measure daily brush use duration, but
continuous recording may be required to capture bout characteristics.