BEEF-CALVES REACT DIFFERENTLY TO DIFFERENT HANDLERS ACCORDING TO THE TEST SITUATION AND THEIR PREVIOUS INTERACTIONS WITH THEIR CARETAKER

Since birth, twenty-four beef calves received either minimal or extens ive contact with one experimenter and were observed in three tests bet ween three and four months of age. In the first test, the calves obser ved with the familiar motionless experimenter spent less time away fro m a feeding bucket (5.6 +/- 4.0 s) than when with an unfamiliar experi menter (21.3 +/- 19.5 s) during the first repetition of test (P < 0.01 ). Differences between experimenters during the second repetition were not significant. The effects of clothes (familiar or unfamiliar) and of the two rearing treatments were also not significant. In the second test, the calves that had received extensive contact with their caret aker during rearing allowed themselves to be touched on the shoulders more quickly (50.4 +/- 52.4 s) when they were eating in the feeding bu cket than those which had received minimal contact (89.6 +/- 55.5 s). Animals that had minimal contact during rearing allowed the familiar e xperimenter to touch their heads more quickly (106.7 +/- 64.1 s) than an unknown experimenter (161.7 +/- 34.6) (P < 0.05). However, the iden tity of the human did not affect time taken by calves to allow their h eads to be touched if they had been reared in extensive contact with a caretaker. No difference was observed between calves when led on to a n unfamiliar weighing crate. Cattle, thus, show different reactions to human beings depending on their familiarity with the human, their pre vious human experience and the properties of the testing conditions fo r the animal. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.