TONGUE-PLAYING IN TETHERED JAPANESE BLACK CATTLE - DIURNAL PATTERNS, ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE AND BEHAVIOR SEQUENCES

Japanese Blacks (a beef breed) exhibit much tongue-playing under inten sive husbandry systems. The purpose of this study is to investigate th e possible causes of tongue-playing. In Experiment 1, differences in t he time budgets among animals and in Experiment 2, diurnal variations and the behavioural sequences were investigated concerning tongue-play ing. In Experiments 1 and 2, 5 10 animals and 13 potential tongue-play ers, respectively, were observed by a scan-sampling technique. Tongue- playing and para-tongue-playing were performed by 31% and 61% of the a nimals, respectively, in Experiment 1. Eight per cent of the animals d isplayed bar-biting, weaving and slowly opening and closing mouths whi le looking upward. Seventy-six per cent of animals performed some kind of abnormal behaviour. Inclusive tongue-playing, which contained both categories of tongue-playing, was performed less by animals in the la st stage of fattening (P<0.05) and by naturally reared animals (P<0.01 ). All 13 animals in Experiment 2 performed tongue-playing. The time b udgets of the inclusive tongue-playing (mainly tongue-playing) in each animal ranged from 1.3 to 17.1% (averaging 6.4 +/- 5.1%) of the 8 h o f observations. Inclusive tongue-playing followed feeding (P<0.01) and was followed by the other tongue movement behaviours (P<0.01). Inclus ive tongue-playing was less likely to follow ruminating (P<0.01) and t o be followed by feeding (P<0.01) and the other behaviours (P<0.05). I t is suggested that feeding frustration, such as artificial suckling a nd qualitatively and quantitatively suppressed feeding, stimulates the onset of stereotypies.