According to research cited by DairyGlobal, dairy cows housed indoors benefit from new thinking about their environment but spend more time using an outdoor yard.

Positive Opportunities

Animal welfare scientists are increasingly focusing on the importance of providing animals with positive opportunities through environmental enrichment. However, apart from brushes, opportunities in the dairy sector have been limited.

Resources that animals become accustomed to too quickly can be economically unviable and offer limited welfare benefits.

Researchers at the University of Nottingham aimed to evaluate the usefulness of simple point source enrichment for housed dairy cows to assess how cows become accustomed to enrichment over time and whether they show a preference for different types of enrichment.

New Study for Dairy Cows

A preliminary experiment provided two groups of dairy cows (n=71) with continuous access to a novel object in their home pens for three weeks. In another experiment, two groups of cows (n=75) received the same novel object along with continuous access to an outdoor concrete yard for nine weeks.

Interaction with the enrichment was quantified using 24-hour continuous video recordings.

Most cows continued to use both resources throughout the study. After two months, the proportion of cows that continued to use the object and the outdoor yard was 0.88 ± 0.01 and 0.96 ± 0.02 per day, respectively. On average, cows spent 2.72 ± 0.37 minutes per day interacting with the novel object by the end of the study, comparable to previously published data quantifying brush use by cows.

Scientists, led by Alison Russell from the School of Veterinary Medicine and Science, identified significant variability in the degree of habituation among cows. Although most reduced their active use of the enrichment to some extent, one-quarter alternately increased the time spent using the enrichment by the end of the study.

Linear models highlighted a significant positive relationship between how long individual cows used the enrichment initially and the extent to which they became habituated to it by the end of the study (P<0.05), with the highest initial users showing the greatest decline in use over time.

More Time Outside

Cows spent more time outside at 72.26 ± 5.13 minutes per day (P<0.05) than using a novel object after two months. The results indicate that housed dairy cattle will utilize additional and novel forms of enrichment if provided, suggesting that their availability is beneficial.

The habituation responses of cows to enrichment do not appear to be consistent at the group level.

Therefore, providing greater opportunities for environmental enrichment for dairy cows should be considered, alongside evaluating their use at an individual level. (Photo: Dreamstime)