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Our objective was to understand the effect of overstocking on the lying and standing behavior of dairy cattle. We manipulated freestall availability by providing 12, 11, 10, 9, or 8 freestalls to 12 cows (n = 4 groups, 12 cows/group), thus creating stocking levels of 100, 109, 120, 133, and 150%, respectively. Treatments were applied for a week at a time in a switchback design. Each group returned to the 100% stocking level after exposure to the other treatments. In addition to lying and standing behavior, we measured each cow's ability to displace others from the freestall to understand the interaction between social status and response to overstocking. When groups of cows had fewer stalls available, they spent less time lying down. There was no effect of overstocking on time spent standing with only the front legs in the stall. Instead, cows compensated for the reduced lying times by spending more time outside of the …