Diurnal ingestive behavior and heat stress in cows grazing in silvopastoral systems and in a tree-less pasture.
Fecha de publicación: 03/03/2017

The aim of this study was to assess the effect of silvopastoral systems in daytime feeding behavior changes as response to heat stress. Twelve crossbred cows Romosinuano × Holstein × Zebu were evaluated with an average weight of 436±64.2 kg and 56±28 days in milk. The direct observation methodology to record activities such as grazing, rumination, walk, resting and water consumption was used to determine the diurnal feeding behavior. To determine the effect of climate, environmental temperature (TA) and relative humidity (HR) were registered, and both were used to calculate the Temperature-Humidity Index (ITH). An effect of the interaction treatment × time on TA and HR (p <0.05) was observed; TA was 36.23 and 36.69°C in the treatments Pastures and pastures-shrub P-Arbust, respectively. There was effect of treatment (p<0.05) on ITH indicating that silvopastoral systems with tree cover recorded up to 2.0 and 2.7 units lower than tree-less prairie and P-Arbust, respectively. Significant effect of treatment (p<0.05) on grazing time and rest time was observed. The treatment Pasto recorded 1.86 hours less than P-Arbor and P-Arbust-Arbor treatments. The Pasto treatment showed more time spent resting (2.96 h). A trend (p=0.098) was observed in the time spent on water consumption. The observed results showed the environmental effect on behavior changes to heat stress, and the evidence that the in the silvopastoral systems were more time on grazing and less stress activities.

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