Understanding individual variability in behaviours associated with illness in animals

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Previous work on humans has illustrated that many of the behaviours shown by ill patients are part of a coordinated strategy to fight disease. The research described in this proposal focuses on adapting these concepts to farm animals. Dairy cattle are an excellent model to study sickness behaviours as they are housed in a highly managed environment and the prevalence of illness is high. My group’s work to date has shown variation among individuals in their behavioural responses to disease. The proposed research borrows from recent advances in the psychology literature on personality in animals (to characterize how individuals differ in response to static test situations), and literature from behavioural ecology on behavioural reaction norms (to characterized how individuals differ in their responses to a variety of exogenous and endogenous stressors related to real-life management of dairy cattle). This overall aim of this proposal is to describe and understand these individual characteristics in cattle. Understanding how individuals differ in their response to illness and other challenges will improving our ability to use these behaviours in identifying sick and at-risk individuals. Thus the specific objectives are: 1) to characterizes the personality dimensions in cattle, 2) to describe behavioural reaction norms for cattle, providing a structure for understanding how different individuals respond to environmental variability, and 3) to determine how an understanding of both personality and behavioural reaction norms can account for individual differences in behaviours expressed by ill cattle and cattle likely to become ill. This research program has the potential to have a profound impact on the care and management of dairy cows and calves; both of which suffer from high rates of illness despite decades of research to date. The findings will form the basis for future practical innovations in care and management of dairy cattle that are aimed at preventing and treating disease.