Fig 1.
Diagrammatic representation of cows’ ear postures (axial, forward, backward up, backward down, asymmetric left, asymmetric right), neck postures (above horizontal, horizontal, below horizontal, down) and tail postures (hanging stationary, small wagging, directed wagging, vigorous wagging, bent sideward) observed while cows were brushing, feeding and queuing to be milked.
Fig 2.
Average number of occurrences (±SE) of axial, forward, backward (up and down) and asymmetric (right and left) ears positions by dairy cows while queuing, brushing and feeding in the loose housing stable.
Different lower-case letters (a, b, c, d) means that there is a difference within activities whereas different upper-case letters (A, B, C) means a difference between activities. Significant differences are presented at the 0.05 level.
Fig 3.
Average number of occurrences (±SE) of horizontal, above horizontal, below horizontal and down positions by dairy cows while queuing, brushing and feeding in the loose housing stable.
Different lower-case letters (a, b, c, d) means that there is a difference within activities whereas different upper-case letters (A, B, C) means a difference between activities. Significant differences are presented at the 0.05 level.
Fig 4.
Average number of occurrences (±SE) of no wagging, small wagging, directed wagging, vigorous wagging and the bent side tail position by dairy cows while queuing, brushing and feeding in the loose housing stable.
Different lower-case letters (a,b,c,d) means that there is a difference within activities whereas different upper-case letters (A,B,C) means a difference between activities. Significant differences are presented at the 0.05 level.
Table 1.
Loadings of the first six components extracted by principal component analysis (PCA), after varimax rotation of cow´s ears, tail and neck positions recorded while queuing, brushing and feeding.
Fig 5.
Biplot of the PC1 and PC2 loadings showing cow’s body postures observed during brushing, feeding and queuing in a loose house system and the 95% cluster for each of these three behavioural activities.
Fig 6.
Hypothetical representation of the core affect diagram in two-dimensional space, illustrating ear, neck and tail postures of dairy cows during brushing, feeding and queuing in a loose housing system.