Hi, I am Ph. D. student doing work on 24 hour activity budgets of sheep and goat under semi-intensive system of management. I want to analyse this behaviour work study. What behavioural activity should I include and which method of analysis is best suited for this type of study.
Hi,
We have recorded such a 24h pattern of activity in pen for goats in an assay to evaluate feeding behavior and global behavior depending of milking regiment (evaluation of possible problems due to milk, accumulation). The observation were made by means of video tape recording in order to avoid interaction between observer and animals. If not possible, it is very important to accustom animal to the presence of one or two observer during at least one week and with strictly lack of any interaction excepted seeing! The main behavior recorded are lying time, standing time, walking time (some times including race time), eating time, ruminating time, drinking time, fighting occurrence between individuals. Specific attention (hear movement, head high), high and low bleating (if sound recorded also), feet movement on place (trampling). If animals are kept in a large open space, it will be difficult to observe all theses behavior. It is necessary to choose some part of the place, to close theses part chosen randomly and to evaluate by observation. In this case you need to look at different biotope in specific and representative manner (Grass, tree, rocks, spring/river sides... because behavior will change significantly. If money, you could register motor activity (podometer) and body temperature and even ruminal/ temperature & pH by telemetric devices. The collection of faeces according to the place is also indicative if you want to analyze feeding choices. If using video recording, you can use fragmented time of observation because 24h recording make very big files. Some specific materials are designed for that. If you have not secific video recorder for night time, you will need to accustom animals in their delimitated area to have an additional light sufficient for video recording (at least one week more of habituation). For methods of analysis, there is a lot of paper with different software and statistical tools specifically designed to time budget analysis. It is a long work, sometimes for very few results and difficult to valorisate scientifically. Courage and good luck in your work. Pierre-Guy
Thanks Pierre Guy. Its very helpful for me. In your answer you pointed out that , there is a lot of paper with different software and statistical tools specifically designed to time budget analysis, for statistical analysis. So please give me some papers related to analysis for these study.
Thank you again.
Are you planning on using video recording or direct observation of the animals? Let me know in order to send you some articles that might help you. - Tamara
Dear Tamara,
Thanks for your answer. I am planning to use video recording with two cameras covering all animals throughout 24 hour.
Waiting for your answer.
Thanks
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