Dairy cows receive a huge amount of care during their lives on a farm, but procedures, especially restraining during procedures, can be stressful for some animals. Positive reinforcement training -- or training with a reward to achieve a desired behavior -- has shown promise to reduce this fear in other species.
In a recent study in the, published by the American Dairy Science Association and Elsevier, a team of researchers set out to understand whether this training technique holds promise for cattle as well. They demonstrated that it not only helps shape dairy cow behavior but can improve their emotional state and overall welfare along the way.
Heinsius noted,"As yet, very little of this research has been devoted to farm animals, so we set out to test the effects of training dairy cows with positive reinforcement in a cattle chute -- a common experience for dairy cows undergoing veterinary care or husbandry." Control heifers were also familiarized with the same chute but were not provided a food reward and were instead guided by a handler using words of encouragement, calm body movements, and gentle nudging to prevent them from backing up.
The training group also displayed more play behavior, such as jumping and running, indicating that the animals considered the training experience to be positive. Heinsius outlined,"We hope to see future work to improve the efficiency of training methods and working with cattle earlier in life. And promising automated approaches might be developed using existing on-farm automation such as computerized feeders."
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