Impact of group management and transfer on individual sociality in Highland cattle (Bos Taurus)

The sociality of cattle facilitates the maintenance of herd cohesion and synchronisation, making these species the ideal choice for domestication as livestock for humans. However, livestock populations are not self-regulated, and farmers transfer individuals across different groups throughout their lives for reasons such as genetic mixing, reproduction and pastureland management. Individuals consequently have to adapt to different group compositions during their lives, compared to their wild counterparts choosing their own herd mates. These changes may lead to social instability and stress, entailing potentially negative effects on animal welfare. In this study, we assess the how the transfers of Highland cattle (Bos taurus) impact individual and group social network measures. We studied four groups with nine different compositions and 18 individual transfers to study 1.) the effect of group composition on individual social centralities and 2.) the effect of group composition changes on these centralities. As shown in previous studies, dyadic associations are stronger between individuals with identical age and dominance rank. Our study showed that dyadic spatial relationships are stable relatively stable between changes in group composition or enclosure but this depends on identities more than the quantity of transferred individuals. Older cattle have higher network centralities than other individuals. The centrality of individuals is also affected by their sex and the number of familiar individuals in the group. When individuals are transferred to a group with few (one or two) or no familiar individuals, their social centralities are substantially impacted. This study reveals the necessity of understanding the social structure of a group to predict social instability through the transfer of individuals between groups.