Cow Spies

Hello faithful Dog Spies readers!  My name is Priya Motupalli, and I’m a PhD student at Harper Adams University College in the UK.  

I’m not a dog-spy by profession, although in a sense, we are all dog spies; I am still trying to figure out how my 13-year-old Dachshund manages to take up ALL the space in my bed.  He’s a miniature, but somehow his lil’ body stretches diagonally across the bed and although by all basic laws of physical science he can’t POSSIBLY use up all the space, he does.  I let him.  Fail. 

I’m what is known as a cow-spy, and I’m particularly interested in the preference of dairy cows for access to pasture.  It’s seems like a weird thing to be studying as most people that have any affinity for animals would think it’s pretty obvious that cows “prefer” to graze, and  “prefer” to be outdoors.  I mean I’d prefer to be outdoors rather than sitting in my office on a Saturday morning pretending to write my thesis.  

The image in our heads of “happy cows” in California (my home state-yay!) grazing over acres and acres of sunny fields makes us happy, therefore it MUST make the cows happy.  For companion animals (dogs, cats, etc.), scientists and pet-owners alike use terms like “happy,” “sad,” etc. with relative ease and acceptance, but try and present research at a scientific conference about “happy cows,” and you’ll be bombarded with a million hands all asking “but how are you quantifying happiness?”  

Here in lies the problem for all farm animal or behaviorist or welfare scientists.  We can’t necessarily quantify happiness in other animals based on how we as human animals feel, because how we feel may not have precise parallels to how  non-human animals feel. 

I read something by Marc Bekoff suggesting that anthropomorphism - in its most basic sense an attribution of human characteristics to non-human animals - is a very common-sense way for humans to relate to the world of animals.  This is a very interesting notion, and negates everything students will ever be taught about behavioral science.  

We are taught on day 1, that anthropomorphism is EVIL and WRONG and UNSCIENTIFIC and we’ll go BLIND if we so much as THINK about doing it.  I mean sure, as Julie mentioned in one her posts, like all other sciences, studying behaviour and welfare MUST be quantifiable and measurable to reap unbiased results that can be trusted as fact.  

But do we REALLY need to keep funding studies that tell us that if we stand outside in the cold for ages we’ll most likely catch a cold??  NO!  The answer is NO!  

Common sense dictates that if I don’t have sufficient protection against the cold, my body cannot thermoregulate properly, my immune system is compromised and therefore I’m more susceptible to whatever beasties want to invade my poor, weak, freezing body.  What I’m trying to say here, is that I believe it is okay to look your dog in the face and say “you know what, his eyes have got a bit of a sparkle in them…I do believe he’s happy,” without running a bunch of statistical tests on dogs that have sparkly eyes.

However, here’s where I cleverly go back to spying on cows, the perception that cows who have access to pasture, an outdoor environment where cows can eat grass, are happier, could be a bit of a misnomer, and sometimes we need to look beyond what makes us happy to understand what makes animals happy.  Let’s take a look:

~ High-yielding dairy cows (Dairy breeds like Holsteins that can potentially produce up to 10 gallons of milk/day) have very complex nutritional demands.  In particular, because they are expected to produce such large quantities of milk, as well as continually get pregnant in order to produce this milk, there are very specific ratios of Energy, Proteins, Minerals and Vitamins that need to be managed during different stages of their life.  Interestingly, these animals may have difficulty meeting their nutritional demands on grass alone (Charlton et al., 2011).  This is so weird, considering grass is supposed to be their “natural” food, but is a symptom of the changes that have occurred in dairy cattle through very specific breeding practices to get cows that have incredibly high genetic potential for milk production.  Simply stated, you get cows that are constantly hungry, and that lose body condition (a state of health or physical fitness) (Kristensen et al., 2007) which in turn compromises the welfare of these animals.

~ Animals raised without access to grazing land are fed a TMR, or a total mixed ration.  They receive all the nutrients they need, providing satiation and a chance to maintain body condition.  A colleague once compared TMR to indulgence food, while fresh grass was like a lovely salad.  If you’ve got a huge plate of (insert whatever you eat when you are being really bad—for me it would be peanut butter and banana sandwiches) in front of you, would you really make the decision to walk allll the way outside to get a salad?  This is a bit of a bad comparison, since TMR isn’t actually bad for cows as it does meet their nutritional demands, but they don’t have to expend really any energy to get the feed as it’s right in front of them! (So you get kinda fat, lazy animals that probably aren’t motivated to get off their considerably large bums and go outside to eat). 

In a study conducted at Reaseheath College in the UK, dairy cows spent over 20 hours indoors when given the choice between staying indoors with TMR, or going outside with access to grazing land (Charlton et al., 2011). Now this doesn’t necessarily mean that cows don’t want to be outside period, it just means that under these experimental conditions, with this particular set of animals it seems to be that dairy cows prefer to be indoors.  There are a NUMBER of factors influencing this decision: individual differences (cow personality); weather; experience of grazing (sticking with what you know); distance to grazing land (maybe being outside is nice, but not worth walking forever to get there)!  The list goes on and on…this is what I’m going to be doing.  Trying to figure out what exactly is important to these animals, and what influences their decisions to be outside vs. inside.  

I’m really interested in looking at the time cows spent outdoors actually EATING vs. doing other things like lying down and time spent indoors eating.  Maybe cows do want to be outdoors, just to get a bit of sun and fresh air and exercise, but they’re not that picky about needing to eat grass all day long.  

This research will have very meaningful implications regarding animal welfare policy in the UK.  UK dairies are looking to house cows indoors continuously throughout the year (as done in many other countries including the US), and although we have an understanding of the physical consequences that dairy cows endure when denied pasture access (higher incidences of hoof disorders and lameness (Olmos et al., 2009); increased levels of mastitis, or a potentially fatal infection of the mammary gland (Washburn et al., 2002) as well as consequences regarding the nutritional quality of the milk they produce (basically cows that eat more grass produce better milk (Butler et al., 2011)) we have yet to fully understand the behavioural motivation for accessing pasture.  

So, question to ponder:  Is grass really better? Some people think so...

~ Priya

Butler, G., Stergiadis, S., Eyre S.M., Leifert, C. 2011. Fat composition of organic and conventional retail milk in northeast England. J. Dairy Sci.94:24-36

Charlton, G., Rutter, S.M., East, M. and Sinclair, L.A. 2011. Preference of dairy cows: Indoor cubicle housing with access to a total mixed ration vs. access to pasture. Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci. doi: 10.106/j.applanim.2010.2010.11.018.

Kristensen T., Oudshoorn, F., Munksgaard, L., Seegaard, K. 2007. Effect of time at pasture combined with restricted indoors feeding on production and behaviour in dairy cows. Animal I. 439-448.

Olmos, G.L., Boyle, L., Hanlon, A., Patton, J, Murphy, J.J. and Mee, J.F. 2009. Hoof disorders, locomotion ability, and lying times of cubicle –housed compared to pasture-based dairy cattle. Livest. Sci 125:199-30

Washburn, S.P., White, S.L., Green Jr, J.T. and Benson, G.A. 2002. Reproduction, mastitis and body condition of seasonally calved Holstein and Jersey cows in confinement or pasture systems. J. Dairy Sci. 85:105-111