TY - JOUR AU - Reipurth, Masja AU - Klausen, Stephanie Kruuse AU - Denwood, Matthew AU - Forkman, Björn AU - Houe, Hans PY - 2020 DA - 2020/11/19 TI - The effect of age when group housed and other management factors on playing and non-nutritive sucking behaviour in dairy calves: a cross sectional observational study JO - Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica SP - 63 VL - 62 IS - 1 AB - The aim of this study was to investigate if calves’ play behaviour and non-nutritive sucking behaviour, as indirect measures of welfare status, are associated with the age of the calf when group housed, age when observed, age difference within the group, pen size, milk feeding system, current or previous sicknesses, access to dry teat, indoor/outdoor rearing, sex, organic/conventional farm, group size and regrouping events. An observational study was conducted on 176 Danish dairy calves in the age range of 1–12 weeks, on both conventional (n = 17) and organic (n = 5) farms. All calves had been group housed before 8 weeks of age and had spent various periods of time with the dam and/or individually housed before being group housed. Behaviour was recorded continuously by filming each individual calf over a period of 30 min. SN - 1751-0147 UR - https://doi.org/10.1186/s13028-020-00562-y DO - 10.1186/s13028-020-00562-y ID - Reipurth2020 ER -