For cattle, a hierarchy is established and maintained by social interactions. It is most obvious when cattle are closely confined, when individuals will be seen to differ in whether they move out of the way of other individuals. The hierarchy is based on the dominance–subordination relationships that exist between each animal, and each other individual in the herd (Hall, 2009).

The herd gets food from three sources, grain, hay, and grass. Understanding where each individual get most of their food is beneficial because it affects the size of each cow and how they make it through the winter. I hypothesize that lower individuals will spend more time grazing in the pasture, similar to what was found by Arave and Albright (1981).

The hierarchy structure in relationship to grooming aims to answer one of two possible hypotheses. The ‘Grooming-for-Commodity’ hypothesis posits that allogrooming is directed from low-ranking animals towards higher-ranking cows in exchange for tolerance and other favors. The ‘Grooming-for-Stability’ hypothesis predicts that allogrooming is performed by high-ranking animals down the hierarchy in order to perpetuate the stability of the social structure (Val-Laillet et al. 2009).

Understanding the social hierarchy of the herd of miniature cattle will help the rancher. This information is helpful when determining who to give more feed to. It also helps when sorting cattle to know which cows to sort together and which ones to keep apart to avoid fighting.

Creator

• Nelson, Cash

Language

• English

Keyword

• cattle

• social hierarchy

• dominance–subordination relationships

• access to feed

• ‘Grooming-for-Commodity’ hypothesis

• allogrooming

• ‘Grooming-for-Stability’ hypothesis

Date created

• 2024

Resource type

• Poster

Rights statement

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/