Cow Talk

Understanding Dairy Cow Behaviour to Improve Their Welfare on Asian Farms

Rebecca Doyle, John Moran

• Publisher: CSIRO PUBLISHING
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781486301614
• eBook ISBN: 9781486301638
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Agribusiness
• Index: Business

The aim of this manual is to improve the welfare of dairy cattle in tropical developing countries, and by doing so, optimise cow and herd performance. It gives the stockmen and farmers directly concerned with the cattle a better understanding of animal behaviour and the ways cattle communicate their comfort or distress. The book discusses normal cattle behaviour and shows how domestication and breeding can affect behaviour to achieve high levels of production of milk, live weight gain and fertility. Animal welfare is important for producers because it can affect the health, production and contentment of cows. Animal welfare practices which adversely affect cow and herd performance on tropical small holder dairy farms are identified. Advice is then given to change the animal's environment or modify a handler's technique to ensure cattle have the degree of comfort needed to achieve more profitable and sustainable systems of livestock farming.Cow Talk will be a beneficial resource for farmers who want to improve animal welfare, farm advisers who can assist farmers to improve their welfare practices, educators who develop training programs for farmers and dairy advisers, and other stakeholders in tropical dairy production such as local agribusiness, policy makers and research scientists.

1

Introduction

This chapter presents an outline of the book. It highlights the importance of improved understanding of dairy cow behaviour and how this behaviour changes under small holder dairy (SHD) farm management.

The main points of this chapter

•In the process of developing tropical SHD farms, farmers and animal researchers have taken a domesticated species of livestock and greatly changed its physical and social environment.

•Animal welfare is important for producers because it can affect the health, production and contentment of cows. Having an understanding of factors that influence welfare can have important implications for production.

•South and East Asia are growing markets for imported dairy products as well as imported dairy stock to increase domestic milk production.

•Greater attention should be placed on management practices in tropical SHD farms to reduce any adverse effects on cow welfare and production.

•It can take up to 6 months for imported temperate dairy heifers to fully adapt to the living conditions of a tropical SHD farm.

•The wants and needs of dairy cows have been summarised as nine key factors.

1.1What this book is all about

This book is primarily about how dairy (and beef) cattle communicate between themselves and with their keepers, namely the stockmen, women and farmers who run their everyday lives. Cattle are naturally gregarious animals preferring to socialise in groups, rather than as individuals. They also prefer space to congestion. Space allows them to sort out their social dominance relationships so the more subordinate cows can rest away from their dominant herd mates. When constricted in sheds, such social grouping is more difficult. Free stalls provide a sanctuary for submissive cows while the tie stall barn virtually removes such social interrelationships altogether.

The husbandry or management of cattle evolved many centuries ago in large areas of natural vegetation where the animals could freely graze. However, nowadays on most Asian farms livestock are restricted to small sheds where they are dependent on their keepers to supply them with everything from feed and water to minimised climate stresses and health support. Likewise, as a full range of natural behaviours when on heat cannot be expressed in small spaces or when tethered, stockpeople have had to be more adept at detecting cows on heat. This means that natural systems, where cows respond positively to the bull’s attention, have had to be altered and now it is the person in charge of stock who identify signs of heat, then seek the bull or source the semen for artificial insemination.

The high cost of land, due to population pressures, and the low cost of labour, arising from the socioeconomic factors in developing countries, have led to continual shedding of stock. Even in developed countries, the more intensively managed cattle are housed. However, where possible, cattle are run outdoors because of the high costs of sourcing feed and water and the capital costs of infrastructure. Labour inputs are grossly different, for example, one stockperson can manage over 100 grazing dairy cows in Australia in contrast to only 20 fully housed cows in Asia.

When stock are housed in the tropics, sheds need to be designed and built to optimise natural ventilation and provide a flooring that is easy to clean yet comfortable to walk and rest on. High roofs and open sides together with gently sloping cement floors and specific cow resting areas on bedding material or mats are common features in well-designed sheds. The resting area should provide stock with non-abrasive bedding materials as well as a comfortable place and space to relax so they are able to more efficiently generate more of the products for which they are farmed, namely milk, meat and calves. Enduring climatic stresses such as high temperature and humidity are generally easier to cope with in the open, provided shade is available and access to natural ventilation is not impaired. It requires careful planning in a cowshed.

By concentrating stock in small or highly stocked areas, not only is it less natural for the stock to exhibit their normal behaviour, but it also provides an ideal environment for the propagation of pathogens. Therefore, attention to stock hygiene and health management must be prioritised to ensure stock do not unduly suffer from the intensive stock diseases associated with hard cement floors, manure and high density housing, namely lameness, mastitis, infectious diseases and respiratory problems.

Housing also means complete dependence on their keepers for feed and water. Even when provided with free grazing, cows depend greatly on the ability of the farmer to provide a diet balanced for the essential nutrients of profitable livestock performance. Out in the field grazing stock can select the most palatable, and presumably the most nutritious, parts of the plant. This is less likely to occur with most housed stock unless they are provided with large excesses, which increase wastage and reduce feeding profits. Hand-fed stock are entirely dependent on their keeper’s skills to provide sufficient quantities of diet ingredients which can supply adequate amounts of feed nutrients and fibre to optimise their performance. This then assumes first, that the farmer has the knowledge and skills to formulate such a diet and second, the ingredients are available and so can be sourced at realistic prices to generate feeding profits.

Housing means increased interaction between stock and humans. The temperament of cattle can vary from wild, hardly tamed beef stock (commonly bulls) to quiet, very tractable and easily managed dairy cows. Housing can magnify the aggressive behaviour traits as cattle are forced to interact more closely with each other and with humans. As with any interaction between living creatures, communication is the key. Humans have developed language skills as the essence of such interaction, although non-verbal communication still plays an important part. Cattle have learnt to communicate between themselves through all their five senses while humans mainly communicate with animals using their ears and eyes and voice.

Communication between animals and humans then forms the basis of expressing the degree of stock comfort; that is how animals are at ease with their environment. If they are not comfortable and clearly indicate this state, it is up to humans to modify the environment to improve the animal’s degree of comfort (see Figures 1.1 and 1.2). Unless they are made more comfortable, their primary objective, namely to produce saleable livestock products, will be compromised. If this is grossly compromised and sales of animal products are greatly reduced, their welfare can often be put at further risk, which indicates the humans’ obligations to look after such animals are not being fulfilled.

Briefly, farmers and animal breeders have taken a domesticated species of livestock and completely changed its physical and social environment, particularly in the case of the SHD farmer in tropical Asia. After breeding and selecting the animal for high levels of production of livestock products of economic value (whether milk, live weight gain and/or calves), people then expect them to function in harmony with their new environment. It is only through better understanding and the provision of their needs to ‘behave’ normally, that we can hope to develop more profitable and sustainable systems of livestock farming. This then is the major objective of this book.

Figure 1.1: Very thin milking cows are an indicator of poor welfare, mainly due to poor feeding management.

1.2Outline of this book

This manual covers a wide range of topics primarily related to ensuring the sustainability of dairy production systems in tropical developing countries. Clearly, to achieve this aim, closer attention needs to be given to the economics of current systems. Sourcing high yielding dairy cows, but providing the feeding and management that only utilises a small proportion of their potential is just not sustainable in the long run. It is also a contributory factor to their suboptimal animal welfare because such animals are more susceptible to the traumas of heat stress, poor housing conditions and, all too often, subsistence feeding management.

This book is written for all the stakeholders in SHD production systems in the tropics, with an emphasis on South-East (SE) Asian countries. While small holders are the major suppliers of milk in the tropics, numerous larger farms are becoming established throughout the tropics to satisfy the increasing demands for fresh milk. It is hoped that both production systems farmers and their advisers will gain much from this manual and improve the welfare and production of their cows. In addition, the book provides relevant key information from research scientists on aspects of cow behaviour and stock welfare. Policy makers and senior management should also benefit from reading selected chapters.

Figure 1.2: Cows are naturally curious creatures.

Most tropical countries have proactive programs to increase local supplies of milk, which require increasing numbers of well-trained workers to service their dairy industries. Consequently, educators from agricultural schools, universities and technical colleges need to be kept abreast of the latest technical developments and applications in dairy farming. This book also aims to serve this purpose.

The key target audiences for this book are:

•Farmers and stockpeople who want to improve and ensure adequate animal welfare.

•Farm advisers who can assist farmers to improve their welfare practices.

•Educators, usually at a technical level, who develop training programs for farmers.

•Educators, usually at a university level, who train dairy advisers in the basics of dairy production technology and stock welfare.

•Other stakeholders in tropical dairy production, such as local agribusiness, policy makers and research scientists.

These chapters are written so that they can be understood by advisers and tertiary students. As the trainers must ensure that other target audiences can comprehend their course material, they should select the most relevant sections to incorporate into basic programs for farmers. Each chapter has been written as a ‘stand alone’ document, which can be individually downloaded from the internet. For this reason, there may be a minimal amount of repetition between chapters. Chapter outlines are as follows:

•Chapter 2 provides an introduction to animal welfare, why it is important and the common welfare issues on dairy farms.

•Chapter 3 provides an insight into domestication, including the impact this has had on natural cattle behaviour.

•Chapter 4 discusses the details of cattle behaviour such as the five senses of the body, the various ways stock communicate with each other, behaviour indicating poor welfare, human–animal relationships and behavioural problems arising from clashes with their environment.

•Chapters 5 and 6 discuss practical signals you can use to assess cow wellbeing and welfare, how they can and should be interpreted and also how many of them have been quantified to improve the impact of their messages.

•Cow comfort is the topic of Chapter 7. This specifically covers what cow comfort is, the implications of this for welfare and how shed design and other facilities on the farm can influence this.

•Chapter 8 provides examples of farm audits and other ways to quantify animal welfare and its impact on dairy cow wellbeing and performance.

•Chapter 9 discusses the management of SE Asian SHD farms highlighting the key constraints to cow performance and how these impact on cow welfare.

•A protocol for the welfare of stock on tropical SHD farms is presented in Chapter 10.

•Chapter 11 concludes the manual with some final overviews.

Every profession has its jargon, or words developed specifically for that profession, and agriculture is no exception. There are some very specific terms and acronyms that are routinely used by dairy researchers and advisers. These are explained in the Glossary and when they are first mentioned in this manual. Full publication details of all sources of information are presented in the References and further reading section, while the Appendices include a list and websites of government and non-government agencies within Australia which are involved in cattle welfare. They also include checklists on how to quantify heat stress, what to look for when assessing good farm management and a simple scoring system of farm stock welfare. Finally, for ease of finding specific information, the Index lists all the key topics covered in the book and their relevant page numbers.

Many of the behavioural studies cited in this manual, particularly those in Chapters 3 and 4, have been reported in some of the standard textbooks on cattle behaviour, for example those written by Albright and Arave (1997), Grandin (1998), Phillips (2002) and Grandin (2007). As the actual researchers who conducted these studies were referenced by these textbook authors, they have not all been cited in this book. However, where a specific chapter has been written for an edited book, the original authors have been cited.

Several of the topics covered in this manual have previously been extensively reviewed in other books about tropical dairy farming, written by John Moran. A...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Foreword
• Contents
• About the authors
• Other books and technical manuals written by the senior author
• Acknowledgements
• Acknowledgement of the Crawford Fund
• Chemical warning
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Cow welfare
• Chapter 3 The implications of cattle domestication
• Chapter 4 Cattle behaviour
• Chapter 5 Observing cow signals
• Chapter 6 Quantifying cow signals
• Chapter 7 Cow comfort
• Chapter 8 Auditing cow welfare
• Chapter 9 Stock management on Asian small holder dairy farms
• Chapter 10 A protocol for the welfare of stock on tropical small holder dairy farms
• Chapter 11 Conclusions
• Appendices
• Glossary
• Abbreviations
• References and further reading
• Index