Journal article
Pre-test habituation improves the reliability of a handheld test of mechanical nociceptive threshold in dairy cows
Mechanical nociceptive threshold (MNT) testing has been used to investigate aspects of painful states in bovine claws. We investigated a handheld tool, where the applied stimulation force was monitored continuously relative to a pre-encoded based target force. The effect on MNT of two pre-testing habituation procedures was performed in two different experiments comprising a total of 88 sound Holsteins dairy cows kept either inside or outside their home environment.
MNT testing was performed using five consecutive mechanical nociceptive stimulations per cow per test at a fixed pre-encoded target rate of 2.1 N/s. The habituation procedure performed in dairy cows kept in their home environment led to lowered intra-individual coefficient of variation of MNT (P < 0.001), increased MNT (P < 0.001) and decreased the discrepancy between applied and target force during stimulations (P < 0.001).
Pre-test habituation improved the reliability of the handheld tool when used in dairy cows kept in their home environment.
Language: | English |
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Publisher: | Elsevier BV |
Year: | 2015 |
Pages: | 189-195 |
ISSN: | 15322661 and 00345288 |
Types: | Journal article |
DOI: | 10.1016/j.rvsc.2015.07.020 |
ORCIDs: | 0000-0002-0153-6240 and Toft, Nils |