Simple enrichment reduces boredom and boosts welfare in housed dairy cows
In a Special Issue of JDS Communications® dedicated to behavior in dairy animals, a new study demonstrates that a novel sailing buoy can make a pen more interactive and engaging
image: In a new JDS Communications study, researchers demonstrate that two boredom-associated dairy cow behaviors significantly decreased when a novel sailing buoy was added to their pen
Credit: Alison L. Russell
Philadelphia, December 16, 2024 – Understanding dairy cow behavior has been a hot topic of dairy science research in the last few decades. In a special issue of JDS Communications dedicated to behavior in dairy animals, a new study highlights the importance of environmental enrichment for improving the welfare of housed dairy cows. Researchers at the University of Nottingham found that introducing a simple novel object into the cows’ environment can significantly reduce boredom-associated behaviors, make the environment more engaging, and help the dairy science community better understand the effects of housing on behavior.
Alison L. Russell, PhD, Research Fellow at the School of Veterinary Medicine and Science, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom, and lead investigator of the study explained, “There’s a growing research focus on ensuring the best possible welfare of dairy cows in our care, particularly those housed indoors. Housing livestock can be beneficial to farms and cow health and welfare—however, it can also lead to monotonous conditions that predispose animals to boredom, a negative emotional state we’d prefer to avoid.”
While the study of environmental enrichment has shown positive results in alleviating boredom in other animal species, this area of research is sparse for housed dairy cows.
Dr. Russell and the study team set out to understand whether providing a novel enrichment object, as is frequently done for pigs, could offer stimulation to cows and help the dairy community better understand boredom behaviors in cows. The study involved 71 Holstein cows housed in sand-bedded cubicles with access to one automatic brush, which is a tool already widely regarded as a positive source of enrichment for cows.
The study cows were then introduced to a new object—an inflatable sailing buoy suspended at cow shoulder height—in the loafing area of their home pen for three weeks.
Dr. Russell noted, “We chose a buoy because it’s safe and practically indestructible, and offers an entirely new opportunity for interaction with the cows.”
The study team then compared the cows’ behavior during this period against baseline weeks when no enrichment was present.
Behaviors were continuously recorded around the buoy and from the robotic milking system used during the trial. Dr. Russell said, “We were recording not just whether the cows interacted with the buoy but two behaviors associated with boredom, in addition to self-grooming behavior.”
The boredom behaviors include idling, where cows stand still and appear unengaged, and refusals during automatic milking, where cows enter the milking robot seeking stimulation after they have already achieved their daily yield or before their next minimum milking interval, as well as self-grooming behaviors such as licking, chewing, and scratching.
Dr. Russell expanded, “The cows readily and repeatedly interacted with the buoy, at a comparable level to the brush, suggesting they found it to be a positive addition to their environment.”
The study results also showed a decrease in both idling and milking robot refusals when the buoy was available to the cows, suggesting that enrichment tools can be effective in making a housing environment more stimulating.
Interestingly, the study also found a contrasting increase in self-grooming behavior when the enrichment was present. Although the literature around self-grooming is contradictory, it is possible these behaviors could be associated with a change in stress or arousal, which could be either positive or negative.
Dr. Russell outlined, “The cows readily interacted with the buoy, suggesting they found it positive instead of stressful. But more work is needed to fully understand these behaviors, to establish whether these enrichments would still be beneficial over a longer period, and to identify the most beneficial types of enrichment for dairy cows.”
The use of environmental enrichment for housed dairy cows is an area of limited research that warrants further investigation. This study helps address an important gap in our understanding of dairy cow behavior and highlights the importance of environmental enrichment for improving the housed environment of dairy cows.
Dr. Russell added, “We hope these findings pave the way for further investigations into potential boredom and negative affective states in housed dairy cows, in line with a growing drive to provide positive opportunities for livestock and further enhance their welfare, and hopefully to the development of new and more effective enrichment strategies.”