Synchronization of ingestive behaviour by grazing dairy cows
- 1 February 1995
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in Animal Science
- Vol. 60 (1) , 25-30
- https://doi.org/10.1017/s1357729800008092
Abstract
The synchronization of eating, ruminating and idling activity by lactating dairy cows grazing a perennial ryegrass-white clover sward was studied. Synchronization was defined as the number of pairs of cows engaged in a particular activity as a proportion of the total possible number of pairs and was compared with random expectation using a kappa statistic. All three activities were significantly more synchronized than random expectation. This suggests that wherever possible individual cows should not be treated as replicates in grazing experiments.Keywords
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