Table B.6.

Description of the literature search on the inability to perform comfort behaviour

Keyword combination of the ‘topic search’	(TS = (dairy AND cow* OR cattle)) AND TS = (“comfort behav*” OR “*groom*” OR “brush”)
Defined time period	2000‐1‐1 to 2022‐4‐28 (due to a limited number of studies on comfort behaviour in dairy cows, the search was extended to a longer publication period compared to the other literature search)
Exclusion criteria	–exclusion of non‐review and non‐research articles, –exclusion of articles in a language other than English, –exclusion of articles from other countries than Europe, USA, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, –exclusion of articles on husbandry systems or practices other than identified under Tor1, –exclusion of articles published in categories other than agricultural animal sciences, veterinary sciences and behavioural sciences, –exclusion of review or investigation of indicators other than animal‐related indicators to assess comfort behaviour of dairy cows (e.g. cow‐calf behaviour), –exclusion of investigations that considered comfort behaviour exclusively in the context of specific disorders (e.g. difficult calving) or events (e.g. novel object), or exclusively in relation to social networks, –exclusion of review or investigation of method quality aspects only.
Outcome	The search resulted in 179 hits of which 31 research and 4 review articles were identified as relevant. A snowball search of the review articles and report on task 1 identified a further three relevant research articles. In summary, 34 research articles were reviewed.