By DANE LILLINGSTONE
RESEARCHERS have discovered that cows may be trained to respond to sound.
The revelation would open up the possibility of teaching cows to come to the dairy in response to a particular call making farmers’ jobs much easier.
FutureDairy researchers made the discovery during their ‘cow calling’ study, in which student Alexandra Green designed a maze in a paddock using electric fencing and copying the same methods that are used with mice and rats. The T-shaped maze had feed bins at both sides of the T.
The study lasted three weeks and used six dairy heifers aged around 20 months.
“We used the Pavlov’s dog principle to teach the cows to associate the sound with a feed reward,” Alexandra said.
“Initially we played a sound when the heifers put their head in a feed bin. Eventually we put the sound only with the feed bin that had feed in it. We started playing the sound as soon as each cow entered the maze to see if we could teach them to follow the noise instead of going to the side they preferred.”
Alexandra said the heifers were quick to pick up on what was happening.
“Initially the cows guessed their way through the maze but they quickly started to turn their heads to where the sound was; they would really think about it,” she said.
“One of the heifers was hilarious. She got every single test correct from day two onwards. She’d kick up her heels in what looked like sheer delight as though she knew she’d chosen the right way!”
Four of the six heifers got a perfect score four times a day for four days in a row. The other two got it right 75 per cent of the time.
“Ultimately we hope we can develop a system where individual cows respond to their own sound by moving from the paddock to the robotic dairy for milking,” she said.
