Cows that live indoors during the day are highly motivated to break curfew and spend the night outside in pasture, according to a UBC study.
The study, was conducted using 22 dairy cows at UBC’s Dairy Education and Research farm in Agassiz, found that they would try just as hard or harder to get outside at night as they would to reach their daily meal. Researchers measured cows motivation by asking them to push increasingly heavier gates in order to reach a reward – sometimes the reward was food, sometimes it was access to pasture.
The cows were willing to push gates that weighed up to 70 kilograms to get outside at night, said UBC land and food systems professor Marina von Keyserlingk.
“The cows vote with their feet,” she said.
“They will push just as much to access to pasture as they will push to access their fresh feed. This tells us that pasture is really important to them.”
Less than 5 per cent of dairy cows in the United States have access to pasture, according to the paper, titled, Dairy cows value access to pasture as much as fresh feed, in the journal, Scientific Reports. The landscape for Canadian dairy farms is similar, said von Keyserlingk.
And while it’s still not clear exactly what cows like about pastures, it’s probably not food, she said. In fact, the cows that spent the night outside ate the same amount of feed as the cows that had been inside all day.
A team of researchers at UBC’s Animal Welfare program plan to find out what cows like about being outdoors.
“Is it the pasture or is it the fact that she wants to be outside? Maybe she wants to lie down in an area where there is no metal – that’s what we’re working on right now,” said von Keyserlingk.
But it’s also important for people to keep in mind that cows are animals and to not impose human values on them, she said.
For instance, UBC conducted surveys that show members of the public often say cows are most happy when they have access to outdoor spaces 24/7. But that isn’t necessarily the case, said von Keyserlingk.
“Our work shows that it’s not that quite that simple. It’s more complicated and definitely more nuanced than that.”
For instance, her previous studies demonstrate that cows voluntarily stay inside during the day, especially during the summer months when it’s hot outside.
Von Keyserlingk also surveys dairy farmers to measure how willing they are to give cows access to pasture and many are open to the idea – they just don’t know how to stay profitable at the same time.
That’s because cows produce less milk if they are roaming around outside during the day, von Keyserlingk explained.
But a past UBC study shows cows that stay inside during the day and outside at night don’t experience any change in milk production. An average cow can produce 35 kilograms of milk a day, she said.
Von Keyserlingk hopes her line of research helps dairy farmers adapt what they hear from consumers to practices that are both beneficial for the cows as well as the farmers’ bottom line.
Source: Toronto Metro