Early handling increases lamb affinity for humans

Domestic animals that are socialized to humans are often more easily managed and less timid than those that are not. We examined whether increased handling and artificial feeding of domestic sheep, Ovis al ies, at an early age would decrease their subsequent timidity towards people. Forty-eight lamb twin sets were divided into four treatment groups for 2 days of treatment at ages 1-3, 3-5, 5-7 or 7-9 days, Treatment lambs were fed milk replacer and were handled four times/day for 5-min periods. Their twins, used as controls, were left with their dams. Two 5-min tests of lamb temperament were conducted at ages 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 15 and 25 days. Testing consisted of a stationary human encounter, in which lambs' responses to a silting person were recorded continuously, and a moving human encounter, in which lambs' responses to a person walking at 0.5 m/2 s were recorded by instantaneous scans. Measures included latency to proximity (<2 m) and arm's reach (<1 m) of the person, time spent in proximity and within arm's reach, average distance (m), mean number of human contacts, number of lambs contacting a person and following/approach/avoidance. Treatment lambs showed significantly greater affinity for humans than their twin controls. The 1-3-day treatment group showed the greatest response to treatment, consistently outperforming controls in all of the above measures. These results suggest that 40 min of positive human contact at age 1-3 days reduces lamb timidity to people. Socialization of lambs to humans need not disrupt the primary lamb-dam bond, and it may have positive management as well as welfare implications. (C) 1998 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.