The Influence of Daily Periods on the Drinking Behavior in Romanian Black and White Primiparous Cows

Abstract

The study was carried out on 9 Romanian Black and White cows in their first one hundred days of lactation. The aim of this study was to determine some aspect of drinking behavior of the cows in 24 hours that were divided into 3 day periods (intervals): 07:00-14:00 (I1), 14:00-21:00 (I2), 21:00-07:00 (I3). During the experiments, the following drinking behavior aspects were determined: the number of drinkings and the length of drinking periods per 24 hours, in the fibrous-succulents administration order of forages (O1) and succulents-fibrous order (O2). Data was computed by ANOVA/MANOVA. Results showed that the daily periods had an influence on the number of drinkings and drinking length, the lowest number of drinkings occurred during the night interval I3 (4.20) and the highest number together with the longest drinking period occurred in the second interval I2 (12.47 and 1062.50 seconds). In both administration order of forages ( O1 and O2) there were a very significant differences (p<0.001) between I1 and I2 in favour of I2, between I1 and I3 in favour of I1 and between I2 and I3 in favour of I2, for number of drinkings periods and for length of drinking periods.

Keywords

• drinking behavior
• primiparous cows
• romanian black and white cows