Previous research on potty training in cows, has shown that calves can associate a place with urination early on. We want to take this research further and extend training to both urination and defecation as well as solutions that are long-term sustainable and practically applicable under commercial conditions.
It is widely accepted that children, cats and dogs are "potty trained" and thus learn associations between a specific location and urination and defecation. This is not as common when you think about other species of animals, even though the concepts of learning and conditioning in animals have been around for over 100 years since Pavlov's dog experiments. The benefits of training farm animals is something that we believe has been overlooked. On large-scale farms, like today's dairy farms, the increasing number of animals leads to a large amount of faeces. This contributes to an increased risk for the animals to slip and develop lameness, increased risk for mastitis due to the daily contact with the animal's own faeces but also a higher level of ammonia.
The three main goals of the project are to:
1) identify effective training regimes that are applicable in practice and evaluate the training capacity of heifers for defecation,
2) assess whether heifers maintain the elimination behaviour over time and quantify the effect on the cleanliness and welfare of the animals and the cleanliness in the stable, and
3) examine the effect of training on the heifers' cognitive ability and problem solving.
The training will be based on positive reinforcement and associative learning. We will perform the studies on heifers destined to become dairy cows and kept under conditions similar to those in commercial production to facilitate implementation of the project's results.
The SLU project group:
- Anette Wichman
- Harry Blokhuis
- Lena Skånberg
- Elke Hartmann
- Else Verbeek
- Kirste McCrea
- Daiana de Oliveir
