Abstract
The hole-board test has been used to assess working and reference memory in a variety of species, but not in cattle. We developed and applied a modified hole-board test for dairy calves. Fifteen bottles were evenly spaced along three walls of a test arena; 11 of these were empty and 4 were ‘baited’ with milk. Calves were exposed daily (over an 11-day learning period) to the test arena with the location of the baited bottles held constant; the location of the 4 baited bottles was then changed and calves were re-trained on these new locations (over a 7-day re-learning period). Working memory (no. of revisits to the baited set), general working memory (no. of revisits to the whole set), and reference memory (avoidance of non-baited bottles) were assessed daily. Performance significantly improved during the learning period for reference and general working memory. Working memory tended to improve, albeit non-significantly. The change in bottle location initially reduced all performance measures, but these subsequently improved during the 7-day re-learning period. These results indicate that a modified hole-board test can be used to assess calf cognition, and thus may be helpful in future research designed to investigate the effects of housing and rearing conditions on cognition.
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Illustration by Kathryn J. McLellan
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Acknowledgements
We thank Joey Krahn, Joseph Lee, Alex San Pedro and Lilith Scherzer from the UBC Animal Welfare Program (Vancouver BC) for their help with this study. We are also grateful to Kathryn J. McLellan for drawing Fig. 1 and to the staff of the UBC Dairy Education and Research Centre (Agassiz, BC) for their help with animal care.
Funding
The study was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council to DW (RGPIN-2016-04620) and M.v.K (RGPIN-2021-02848). This Animal Welfare Program is supported by the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council’s Research Chair in Dairy Cattle Welfare together with our industrial partners the Dairy Farmers of Canada (Ottawa, ON, Canada), Saputo Inc. (Montreal, QC, Canada), British Columbia Dairy Association (Burnaby, BC Canada), Alberta Milk (Edmonton, AB, Canada), Intervet Canada Corporation (Kirkland, QC, Canada), Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health (Burlington, ON, Canada), BC Cattle Industry Development Fund (Kamloops, BC, Canada), The Semex Alliance (Guelph, ON, Canada), CanWest DHI (Guelph, ON, Canada), Dairy Farmers of Manitoba (Winnipeg, MB, Canada), and SaskMilk (Regina, SK, Canada). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
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BL, MvK and DW conceived the experiment. BL and RW collected the data. BL, RW and DW analyzed and interpreted the data. BL, RW, MvK and DW drafted and reviewed the article.
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The study was approved by The University of British Columbia’s Animal Care Committee (# A19–0128) and cared for according to the guidelines outlined by the Canadian Council of Animal Care (2009).
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Lecorps, B., Woodroffe, R.E., von Keyserlingk, M.A.G. et al. Assessing cognitive performance in dairy calves using a modified hole-board test. Anim Cogn 25, 1365–1370 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-022-01617-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-022-01617-5