Cow comfort” and “animal welfare” are two phrases receiving an increased amount of attention from dairy producers across the nation. Have you heard these phrases recently? Do you know what they mean? How do you measure cow comfort? As you consider these questions, let’s start at the beginning: animal behavior. I spent the last seven years working on animal behavior in lizards, horses, goats, and cattle. For the purpose of this article, I will focus on dairy cow behavior. I encourage you to attempt to identify the following ten cow behaviors on your dairy and consider how changes in some of these behaviors may help you identify issues in the herd:
1. Feeding – Decreases in the amount of time a cow spends at the feed bunk may indicate metritis, ketosis, or, locomotion disorders.
2. Isolation – Isolation behavior (or seclusion from the rest of the herd) may occur prior to calving.
3. Social – Cows develop a social hierarchy within a herd. Cows ranked lower in social hierarchy are displaced at the feed bunk more often than cows ranked higher in the social hierarchy
4. Estrous – Restlessness, chin resting on other cows, standing heat, and increases in walking are all behavioral tools used to detect estrus in cows.
5. Maternal – Following calving, cows lick their calves to stimulate calf activity and dry the calf’s coat. Cows may also display a flehmen response (elevation of head combined with retraction of the upper lip) towards the calf and amniotic fluids.
6. Lying – During the six hours prior to calving, cows will increase their number of lying bouts, but will decrease their overall time spent lying.
7. Drinking – Water consumption increases during heat stress conditions, but cows will decrease their time spent drinking prior to calving.
8. Standing – One week prior to calving and during the day of calving, cows diagnosed with ketosis increase the amount of time they spend standing.
9. Stereotypic (repetitive behaviors that hove no obvious function) – Increases in number of tongue-rolling occurrences within a herd may be associated with restrictive feeding.
10. Agonistic – As feeding space at the bunk decreases, the number of aggressive displacements at the bunk increases.
Amber Adams Progar, Dairy Management Specialist
Source: March 2015 WSU Dairy Newsletter
