The presence of the dam affects the efficiency of gentling and feeding on the early establishment of the stockperson-lamb relationship

This experiment investigates how the maternal presence influences the effec t of additional human contact in early age on the reaction of lambs to thei r stockperson. Forty twin-born lambs were involved in this experiment durin g their first 4 days of life. Ten pairs of twins were reared artificially f rom 12 h of age. One of each litter (AF, n = 10) received 6.5 +/- 0.7 sessi ons of 30 min of separation from the twin (with a wire fence) with 5 min of gentling and feeding (suckling from a bottle and from a bucket fitted with a rubber teat). The other twin was not treated. Ten pairs of twins were re ared with their dam and received 6.6 +/- 0.7 sessions of treatment. One twi n (MAF, n = 10) received the same treatment as AF. The other twin (M, n = 1 0) was separated for 30 min from the dam and had no human contact. From the age of 70 +/- 7 h, lambs were tested in a social isolation test (alone for 1 min, with the familiar stockman for 2 min, alone again for 1 min), in a Preference test (2 min) between an unfamiliar maternal ewe and the familiar stockman, and, for the AF lambs only, in a Preference test (2 min) between their familiar and an unfamiliar stockman. Eight AF lambs learned to suck on their own from the bucket of milk by the end of the experiment compared to only one MAF (P < 0.001), AF lambs approached the human more (P < 0.01), vocalised less (P < 0.01) and walked less (P < 0.01) during the social iso lation test than animals reared with their mother (M and MAF). AF did not s how any preference between the stockman and the unfamiliar maternal ewe whi le M and MAF lambs chose the ewe (P < 0.05). AF lambs discriminated the fam iliar from an unfamiliar stockman only if they had learned to suck from the bucket during the treatment. Nevertheless MAF lambs vocalised less than M (P < 0.05) in the presence of the stockman during the social isolation test , indicating a possible reduction of isolation distress. These results show that artificially reared lambs are preferentially motivated to interact wi th a familiar human after only a few days of contact. Moreover, they highli ght the difficulty in using a feeding reward to improve the human-lamb rela tionship when lambs are reared permanently with their dame. However, the re sults suggest that early gentling improves the human-animal relationship wh atever the maternal environment. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.