How observing cow behav­iour can unlock produc­tivity

It is more than 20 years since two Dutch vets – Joep Driessen and Jan Hulsen did their first CowSig­nals work­shop. These work­shops aim to educate farmers, vets and advi­sors on cow welfare, its role in disease preven­tion and improving returns.

CowSig­nals work­shops remain popular with dairy farmers and a series has recently been held by the UK Agri­cul­ture and Horti­cul­ture Devel­op­ment Board (AHDB) on host farms in the UK. UK vet, Owen Atkinson, Founder of the Dairy Veteri­nary Consul­tancy, has run several.

“The work­shops bring together a lot of common-sense advice,” says Mr Owen. “We can learn from the behav­iour of the indi­vidual cow and the herd to improve manage­ment of the latter and her envi­ron­ment. It is about looking, thinking and acting. We are helping farm staff to observe the cow’s body language and how the cow and herd interact.”

Staff can often develop what Mr Atkinson terms owner blind­ness – not seeing the obvious because they are so used to it. “But as part of the training we develop check lists, which help. A nutri­tionist may be focused on muck and cows’ sorting feed, a farmer on heat detec­tion while a geneti­cist may look at confor­ma­tion. It is about broad­ening the things they normally look for.

Work­shop for the welfare of cows

• A typical work­shop will start by outlining CowSig­nals concepts. These include the ‘Six Free­doms of Pasture’ – against which a cow’s envi­ron­ment can be assessed when housed. These are air, light, space, rest, feed and water (see panel).
• Next, partic­i­pants are encour­aged to observe cows by standing in a feed passageway and looking at their distri­b­u­tion. “Are they tight? Are there many ‘waiting cows’? Are there conflicts? Are cows getting harassed or asserting their domi­nance?
• We then zoom in a bit. Have cows got hock lesions? What propor­tion have a body condi­tion score of less than 2.5 or more than 3.5? How do they rise and get out of cubi­cles? How much space is there is for cows at feed barriers, is feed heating up and are cows sorting feed?
• We then focus on one less domi­nant cow, looking at signals like respi­ra­tion rate, clean­li­ness, body condi­tion score, rumen fill and pres­ence of lesions which could indi­cate prob­lems.

Listing what’s going well and what could be better helps in drawing up an action check­list for the farm, says Mr Atkinson. “The benefit for the host farm is they have 12 pairs of eyes looking at their cows and suggesting ideas for them to run with.”

Create enough space

A key area often over­looked is space, he says. “Space is impor­tant for expres­sion of natural behav­iour, freedom of move­ment, reducing hier­ar­chical stress, ensuring good feed intakes and reducing prob­lems from exces­sive mois­ture, heat and slurry. “More space means there is less slurry as it is more spread out, impor­tant for foot health.”

A typical amount of space in UK housed herds is between 6m² and 8m² per cow, but 10m² per cow is a very reason­able aspi­ra­tion for modern housing, of which approx­i­mately 3-3.5m² will be lying area, says Mr Atkinson.

“How this space is config­ured will, to a large extent, govern how effec­tively the shed works and how good ‘cow-flow’ is. For example, there should be no dead ends, no tight corners and no conges­tion points. 

“Extra width should be given in the feed areas or around milking robots as these are high conges­tion areas where domi­nance behav­iour by certain cows has the greatest poten­tial for damage.”

Insuf­fi­cient space leads to ‘waiting cows’, explains Mr Atkinson. “These are cows not standing and eating or lying down chewing their cud. They are waiting to do some­thing different – either to find a comfort­able place to lie down, or to go to the feed barrier to eat. There should be fewer than 15% ‘waiting cows’ at any time.”

Know the daily routine

How a cow spends her time – the time budget concept – is impor­tant for health, welfare and produc­tivity. For 12 out of 24 hours, she should be lying down. Eight to 10 hours of this lying time should be spent chewing cud. It is done in aliquots of time so no more than one hour at each aliquot, explains Mr Atkinson.

“The next biggest activity is eating – a housed cow will spend four to five hours doing this but it is the number of bouts is key. Cows with lower domi­nance may feed in three bouts but ideally it will be done in seven to eight bouts throughout the day. Cows have evolved to eat little and often, main­taining a steady rumen pH and better rumen effi­ciency. Too few bouts can lead to acidosis.”

Fewer bouts can result from insuf­fi­cient feed space at the right time, says Mr Atkinson. “A farmer may go into the shed at 10pm and see lots of empty feeding space, but cows are herd animals and all want to eat at the same time and lie down at the same time. If there are only 100 cubi­cles for 110 cows, they are not getting 12 hours’ lying time. “Each extra hour of lying time from nine to 10 hours up to a maximum of around 12 hours allows a cow to produce a further litre of milk.”

One way to increase space is to reduce stocking rate, or for farmers unwilling to do so, build more shed space, or create an outdoor loafing area – a low-cost solu­tion, suggests Mr Atkinson. “An outdoor loafing area can take the pres­sure off shed space. Some farmers simply open the doors and erect elec­tric fencing to create the loafing space.”

Learning from a Holstein herd in Scot­land

Sandy Milne, director of Robert Milne, farms at East Pitfor­thie, near Brechin, Angus, Scot­land. The 500ha farm is arable and dairy, with 405 cows plus young­stock. The Holstein herd is year-round calving, with three times a day milking. Average yield is 11,500 litres with 4% fat and 3.25-3.3% protein.

Mr Milne likes to give staff oppor­tu­ni­ties to keep up to date with training. “We wanted to offer staff an insight into thinking from a cow’s view­point so we recently hosted an AHDB CowSig­nals work­shop led by Owen Atkinson of Dairy Veteri­nary Consul­tancy.”

One of Mr Milne’s concerns has been clin­ical mastitis. “Although we have good cell counts, clin­ical mastitis is a problem we want to improve on. We use a straw yard for freshly calved cows which can become over­stocked. Owen explained that cows can pick up E coli which doesn’t neces­sarily show as mastitis until further through their lacta­tion. It has focused our minds on never over­stocking as this is partially respon­sible.”

He is also looking at cubi­cles for young­stock, currently housed in straw yards, so the tran­si­tion is less stressful when they enter the herd. And he is pushing up feed more often to encourage cows to visit more frequently and discourage sorting.

Mr Atkinson commented that cow flow is good through the shed which was erected in 2003/4. “He was compli­men­tary, saying it was ahead of its time which was nice to hear,” says Mr Milne. “We would like to look into putting down rubber in the feeding and collecting area.

“It is too early to say whether the changes will deliver more profit, but the evidence points to an improve­ment if we carry out these measures. The work­shop was very insightful and makes you look at what you are doing from a different perspec­tive. We can look at the cow’s daily routine from her point of view and how we can make her more comfort­able and produc­tive.”