Behavioural assessment of the habituation of feral rangeland goats to an intensive farming system

•Habituation methodologies needed for captured feral goats transitioning to intensive rearing.•Simple technique of increased human-animal interaction was tested.•The human-animal interaction resulted in production performance and behavioural benefits. There is increasing interest in methods for the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Applied animal behaviour science 2018-02, Vol.199, p.1-8
Main Authors:	Miller, David W., Fleming, Patricia A., Barnes, Anne L., Wickham, Sarah L., Collins, Teresa, Stockman, Catherine A.
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Airspeed Animal behavior Avoidance behavior Body mass Caprinae Domestication Farming Farming systems Feedlot Flight Flight behavior Goats Habituation Habituation (learning) Human-animal relationship Intensive farming Qualitative analysis Qualitative behavioural assessment Rangelands Subgroups
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Summary:	•Habituation methodologies needed for captured feral goats transitioning to intensive rearing.•Simple technique of increased human-animal interaction was tested.•The human-animal interaction resulted in production performance and behavioural benefits. There is increasing interest in methods for the habituation of feral rangeland goats to intensive farming conditions. We tested whether there were production performance and behavioural differences between groups of rangeland goats in an intensive farming system that were either exposed to a high degree of human interaction (HI, n=60) or low degree of human interaction (LI, n=60) over 3 weeks. In the HI group, a stockperson entered the pens twice daily and calmly walked amongst the goats for 20 mins. In the LI group, a stockperson only briefly entered the pens to check water/feed (daily/weekly). At the end of each week the goats were weighed and drafted into 12 subgroups of 10 animals (i.e. 6 sub-groups per treatment). Each sub-group was then tested for agonistic behaviour, avoidance of humans, and flight response. During the flight response test video footage was collected and later used for analysis using Qualitative Behavioural Assessment (QBA). For QBA analysis, the videos of each group, taken each week, were shown in random order to 16 observers who used their own descriptive terms to score the groups’ behavioural expression. There was a significant interaction between treatment and time on body mass (F3,174=5.0; P
ISSN:	0168-1591 1872-9045