A COMPARISON OF WEANING TECHNIQUES IN FARMED WAPITI (CERVUS-ELAPHUS)

Twenty-one wapiti calves, born between 24 May and 4 July were weaned o n 5 September. They were weighed, divided into two groups (10 and 11 c alves) and either moved to a familiar paddock, adjacent to their darns and allowed fence-line contact (contact wean - CW), or moved to a fam iliar paddock which was visually obscured, and separated from their da ms by approximately 50m (remote wean - RW). For the next two days afte r weaning the calves were observed from dawn until dusk. All observati ons were done using a 10-minute instantaneous scan sampling technique. Activities recorded included the number of calves standing, walking, lying, fence-line pacing, running, grazing, and feeding at a trough. O n day 4 the observation time was reduced to 9 hours and 20 minutes. Ob servations were continued for a further six days during 2-hour periods after dawn and before dark. The calves were held in these separate pa ddocks for 10 days and during that time were weighed. After that they were held together in the remote wean paddock and weighed again at 31 and 63 days. There were no significant differences in the amount of ti me spent grazing between the two groups and there were no differences in weight gains between the groups throughout the trial. The CW calves vocalized less and spent less time standing, walking, fence-line paci ng and running compared to RW calves. The CW calves were also observed spending more time lying and feeding at the trough. Overall, the CW c alves displayed fewer behaviours indicative of the distress following weaning.