Document type: Brief scientific review published in JDS Communications
Author: Heather W. Neave
Preview: This brief symposium review highlights a selection of ways to assess the mental states of dairy cattle, with a focus on positive emotional states and cognitive function and how they are affected by management practices. It highlights behavioral indicators like play, body postures, and grooming; physiological measures such as heart rate variability and peripheral body temperature; and cognitive tests like judgment and attention bias that evaluate differences in information processing. Tests of cognitive function also reveal learning, memory, and cognitive flexibility as measures of mental state. These methods evaluate how management practices-housing, feeding, and enrichment, for example-positively affect the mental states of dairy calves and cows. Emerging technologies offer exciting possibilities for automated, continuous on-farm monitoring that could enable stakeholders of the dairy industry to adapt practices to support welfare and productivity.
