Resting behaviour and displacements in ewes—effects of reduced lying space and pen shape

Increased space allowance is usually considered to improve welfare and performance in farms animals. The aim of this experiment was to investigate the effect of lying space and pen shape on the resting behaviour and displacements in ewes. A 2 × 3 factorial experiment was conducted with lying space (0.5, 0.75 and 1.0 m2/ewe) and pen shape (deep and wide) as main factors. A total of 24 adult ewes were randomly assigned to six groups. All groups were exposed to all the treatments and each treatment period lasted for 7 days. The ewes were videotaped for the two last days of each treatment period, and the general activity, position in the pen and lying close to other ewes were scored every 15 min. In addition, all displacements were scored continuously.Total lying time was reduced from 70 to 63% when the lying area was reduced from 1.0 to 0.5 m2 (P < 0.05), and the lying time in the deep pens (67.0%) was longer than in the wide pens (64.5%) (P < 0.05). Synchronization of lying (all four ewes lying simultaneously) was reduced from 45.4 to 5.9% (P < 0.001) whereas the number of displacements of lying ewes (per ewe and 24 h) increased from 6.4 to 28.9 (P < 0.001) as the lying area was reduced.The lowest ranked ewe in each group were lying significantly less (P < 0.01) and were significantly more active (P < 0.05) than the other ewes. Except for lying time, pen shape had no significant effects on the behaviour of the ewes. In conclusion, reducing the lying space from 1.0 to 0.5 m2/ewe, resulted in a reduction in lying time, less synchronized resting and a large increase in the number of displacements. Except for a lower lying time in wide than deep pens, there were no significant effects of pen shape.