Just as with humans, social relationships in the bovine world have a substantial effect on an individual cow’s success. In the U.S. dairy industry there is substantial diversity in group size, pen layout, stocking density, and grouping strategy – all of which will influence how cows interact.
As research accumulates, we continue to learn more about the complex social network that is characteristic of groups of dairy cows. Within social groups, cows often form social bonds – or friendships – and definitely have preferred cows to eat with at the feed bunk. These relationships can be surprisingly durable, and it’s common to observe subgroups of cows preferring certain stalls or places to feed within the context of a much larger pen of cows. Increasingly we’re learning about the specific and important role of social grooming or licking behavior.
Research conducted in the 1990s at Purdue University by Jack Albright showed that grooming is a behavioral need of dairy cows. In fact, when cows have been locked into headlocks for extended periods of time, the first behavior they perform upon release is grooming. Grooming, or licking behavior, can be an effective indicator of the stability of the social structure in a pen of cows. Grooming helps to maintain the social structure, and the strength of social bonds is reflected in the degree of grooming between individual cows.
Social grooming has a calming effect on cows and plays an integral role in decreasing social tension and enhancing group stability. Jack Albright referred to cows that seem to spend considerable time engaged in grooming and licking behavior as “public servants” that groom for the good of the group. When investigating licking behavior, Japanese researchers found that nearly 80% of social grooming focused on the head and neck – areas unreachable by the animal herself. In the case of unsolicited grooming, the licking activity was oriented primarily to the back and rump areas of the cow.
The parallels with human society are too obvious to ignore. In an early review of cow behavior published in the Journal of Dairy Science in 1981, Arave and Albright reported that milk yield and milking order were positively correlated with being groomed by other cows. In fact, they even proposed that culling good social groomers – one might say the boot lickers of bovine society – could result in reduced milk yield and greater mortality within the group.
They pointed out that not all cows are accomplished at rendering the service of social grooming, and the cows that excel at it ought to be maintained within the herd. So, it appears that bovine boot lickers play an important role in the social structure of our cow pens. Their grooming behavior helps stabilize social order, lessens the chance of aggression, and generally lets other cows within the pen get on with their daily activities.
Not so different from our own human society!
Source: Minor Institute
