Observations Regarding the Duration of Feeding Behaviour when Intensively Farmed Coypus (Nutrias) are Fed with Barley and Carrots

Abstract

The studies on coypu behaviour are applied in the development of knowledge regarding ethology, in the coypu-breeding technology, animal welfare and, at the moment, they present great importance for animal protection. The biological material studied was consisted of health adult coypus, belonging to the variety Golden Standard with a similar body mass. The indices supervised were: feeding behaviour duration if coypus are fed with barley and carrots according to gender and time slot, the duration of one feeding sequence according to forage consumed and gender and the number of feeding sequences according to forage consumed and gender. For realising the purposed aim, each coypu was monitorized (video), individually, 24 hours a day. The duration of feeding behaviour when coypus are fed with barley and carrots was 4507.88±38.99 seconds for males (5.21% of the behavioural manifestations), and for coypu females, the duration of feeding behaviour was 4576.63±26.01 seconds (5.29% of the behavioural manifestations). The most intense manifestations of the feeding behaviour took place in the time slots 08:00-14:00 and 14:00-20:00, and the lowest intensity of the feeding behaviour manifestations took place in the time slot 02:00-08:00.

Keywords

• coypu
• feeding behaviour
• intensive system