LINDELL BEACH, B.C. – New research is providing dairy producers with an insight into the value of cow comforts.
“(Understanding) the repertoire of behaviour of dairy cattle is really important,” said Marina von Keyserlingk, associate professor in the animal welfare program of the University of British Columbia’s land and food systems faculty.
“We looked at how they evolved in the wild to how they should be handled in domestication.”
Earlier this year, von Keyserlingk and animal welfare professors Dan Weary and David Fraser received a $1 million Industrial Research Chair joint award from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, Dairy Farmers of Canada, the Westgen Endowment Fund, Pfizer Animal Health, the Beef Cattle Industry Development Fund, the B.C. Milk Producers Association, the B.C. Dairy Foundation, the B.C. Dairy Education and Research Association and Alberta Milk.
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The five year award will be used to focus on two critical areas: prevention of illness and lameness through improvements in facility management and design, and dietary and management transitions for dairy cows – milk to starter feed to forage and the beginning and ending of lactation.
Much of the research will be conducted at UBC’s Dairy Education and Research Centre (DERC) in Agassiz, B.C.
“We are looking to find practical solutions for farmers to (help them) improve their management practices,” von Keyserlingk said.
She said the benefits of natural living for modern dairy cattle are less obvious than one might expect.
Natural living, while frequently interpreted as grazing and socializing, also means exposure to weather extremes, disease, parasites and predators. In addition, it’s difficult to understand the natural living preferences of the modern dairy herd, given genetic changes that have been made through selective breeding.
“We need to know which aspects of natural life are really important to animals, how these might be evaluated and whether any benefits can be achieved in a more practical way.”
Von Keyserlingk used the example of feeding calves, which in modern dairy production differs profoundly from nature.
“If you take the calf away from the cow and give it a nipple so it can drink as much milk as it wants, it will drink as much as from a cow,” she said.
Social enrichment
One of the university’s animal welfare studies focuses on the benefits of social enrichment and cognitive development for calves during weaning. Calves are often removed from their mothers early and fed with an artificial teat. They are then weaned onto a starter feed between two and four months of age, which can cause the animals stress.
An isolated calf will vocalize frequently but one that has a social partner will be less stressed as they adapt and learn together.
Lameness results from infectious diseases or lesions, but some producers have difficulty recognizing the early stages, partly because large herd sizes don’t allow farmers to spend enough time observing gait movements.
“Many gait-scoring methods suffer from a lack of detail regarding the specific changes in gait expected to occur as cows become lame.”
The research group used a gait-scoring system based on specific movement features, such as asymmetric steps and tracking up.
That proved valuable not only in early detection of conditions such as sole ulcers but also in monitoring the reduction of pain following medication.
Considerable research has proven that all methods of dehorning cause pain in calves and that a local anesthetic does not make it better.
“However, the need to dehorn is an essential management practice since horns are a danger to other animals and people,” von Keyserlingk said.
“If we have to do this, how do we do it humanely?”
Dairy Farmers of Canada and the National Farm Animal Care Council published an updated Code of Practice for the Care and Handling of Dairy Cattle this year that incorporated many DERC findings.
