There is growing evidence that animal personalityis linked to a range of productivity traits in farm ani-mals, including dairy cattle. To date, the methodologyfor assessing personality traits of dairy cattle is timeconsuming and often requires a test arena, which limitsthe opportunity for commercial farms to use personal-ity traits of dairy cattle for individualized management.This study investigated whether personality traits ofpastured dairy cattle, scored in short behavioral tests,are associated with daily behavioral patterns and milkproduction. Cows (n = 87) were exposed twice to eachof 5 behavioral tests, where their responses to novel orputatively stressful situations were scored on an ordinalscale for investigative and reactive behavior toward anovel object and a novel human after exiting the milk-ing parlor, response to restraint in a crush, avoidancedistance from an approaching human in the paddock,and response to milking (step-kick behavior). Mostbehavior test scores were consistent over the 2 testrepeats (using repeatability estimates, Mann-WhitneyU test of difference between repeats, and Spearmanrank correlation). Behavior test scores were subjectedto a principal components analysis that revealed in-tertest relationships in 3 factors of correlated sets oftest scores, interpreted as personality traits (fearful ofhumans, calm-investigative, and reactive to milking).Regression analyses determined how these traits wereassociated with daily grazing, ruminating, and lyingbehaviors, and milk production (after controlling forcow age, breed, lactation status, group, and climatevariables). Cows that were more fearful of humans (highavoidance distance, reactive toward the novel human)had reduced lying time compared with cows that scoredlow on this trait. Cows that were more calm (duringrestraint) and investigative (toward the novel object)had greater grazing time, which likely contributed totheir greater milk production compared with cows thatscored low on this trait. Cows that were more reactiveto milking produced less milk than cows that scoredlow on this trait. These results indicate that individualdifferences in daily behavior patterns and milk pro-duction of dairy cattle are associated with personalitytraits of cows, measured using several short behavioraltests. These methods may be useful for characterizinggrazing dairy cattle on commercial farms, which couldaid in understanding individual behavior patterns andprovide opportunities for individualized management.
