General hygiene is also important, as farms with effective fly control, as well as those that prevent calves from suckling on other heifers, seem to have fewer cases of mastitis.
De Vliegher, S., Fox, L.K., Piepers, S. et al., (2012) Mastitis in dairy heifers: Nature of the disease, potential impact, prevention, and control, Journal of Dairy Science, 95: 1025- 1040.
In humans, ‘empathy’ is described as the ability of a person to observe the emotional state (such as distress) of another human, and to develop an appropriate emotion in one’s own mind. In practice, it is quite hard to determine experimentally whether an emotional response generated in an observer is really due to that observer feeling what another human might be feeling, or if it is merely a result of the observer having seen something pleasant or unpleasant (i.e. the observer’s personal response to a stimulus). Naturally, the difficulties in determining whether a behaviour is empathic or not are compounded when non-human animals are the subject of investigation. READ MORE