The impact of gentle contacts on ease of handling, welfare, and growth of calves and on quality of veal meat

It has been demonstrated previously that regularly stroking and letting cal ves suck fingers leads to less avoidance and more approach behavior of the calves toward people. To examine whether these positive contacts affect the welfare and productivity of calves and the quality of veal meat we used 22 veal calves housed in individual crates. Half of them received minimal con tact with the stockperson (controls), and the other half were given additio nal gentle contacts around meals, by stroking the calves and allowing them to suck the stockperson's fingers, during the entire fattening period (21 w k). Welfare was assessed through behavioral reactivity (reactions to handli ng, to surprise stimuli, and to novelty), neuroendocrine responses to stres s (cortisol in response to an ACTH challenge, catecholamine-synthesizing en zymes), and health (number of medical treatments, abomasal lesions). Calf p roductivity was assessed through growth rates and meat quality through glyc olytic potential tan estimator of resting glycogen level in muscle), pH, an d color. Calves that received gentle contacts were less agitated (P < .01) and tended to defecate less (P = .08) when handled in a cart on wheels than the control calves, but no treatment effects were found in reactivity to n ovelty and surprise stimuli, responses to ACTH, and catecholamine synthetic potential. Calves given gentle contacts had fewer abomasal lesions than co ntrols (0/11 vs 4/11, P = .05). The glycolytic potential of the semimembran osus muscle was higher in calves that received gentle contacts than in cont rols (172.6 vs 154.1 mu mol/g, P < .05), but no treatment effects were obse rved on meat pH, meat color, or growth rates. It is concluded that gentling veal calves reduces their reactions to handling. Gentle contacts reduce th e reaction to transport shown by differences in glycolytic potential. In ad dition, the reduction in reactions to handling and the decreased incidence of abomasal lesions can contribute to an improvement of the calves' welfare .