Activity patterns of free-ranging beef cattle in Norway

Abstract

The aims of this study were to: 1) build a model to classify cattle activities based on locomotion and neck movement data and 2) study the daily time budget of non-native beef cattle in the boreal forest of southeastern Norway. We used GPS collars programmed to take positions and activity measures every five minutes on 18 cows during the grazing seasons 2015–17, together with behavioural observations in the field. The model classified the collar data into Grazing, Low (resting behaviours) and High (other active behaviours) activity with an accuracy of 79.4%. The cows spent 8.1 ± 0.5 (mean ± SD) hours per day grazing, corresponding to 34% ± 0.5% of their daily time budget. Daily grazing time increased during summer and was longer for lactating than dry cows and at low compared to high stocking density.