Beef cattle: do we really want them that docile?
Abstract
In beef livestock farming, highly fearful or aggressive animals are undesirable and hence culled mainly due to production and work safety issues. It is seemingly believed that the more docile an animal, the better its husbandry. The present article challenges the fact of rearing extremely docile cattle in any productive context and aims to critically approach temperament as a functional feature to grassland-based production systems. Under agroecological conditions similar to the species’ ancestral environment, an intermediate expression of docility would be likely better as it contributes to enhanced biological fitness. Likewise, animal welfare is being invoked as genetic improvement criteria to take into account.
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References
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