OPERANT-CONDITIONING OF THE UNRESTRAINED GOAT (CAPRA-HIRCUS)

Unrestrained goats were trained by the method of successive approximat ions to press a 'press panel' with their muzzles and heads to obtain a 1 g Bio-Serv banana-flavored dustless, precision pellet or 4 g of Ful -O-Pep (sweet) horse feed. In a typical 30-45 min session, the goats p ressed the 'press panel' an average of 1511 (+/- 179) presses for pell ets and 1605 (+/- 521) presses for sweet feed. One goat received 1440 g (260 reinforcements) of sweet feed, which represented approx. 7%/BW of the goat (19.9 kg). These results demonstrate that unrestrained goa ts can be trained easily to perform an operant conditioning task for a feed reward. Operant methodology can be used to determine feed prefer ences or to evaluate effects of a wide variety of treatments, such as drugs, environmental conditions (effects of heat, cold, etc.), and man agement techniques (overcrowding, transportation) on motivation and pe rformance.