We’ve all heard the phrase “Happy Cows”, but a study being done by Dairyland Initiative at UW-Madison is proving just what it takes to help bovines achieve udder bliss.
Mitch Breunig has been working with Dr. Nigel Cook and the Dairyland Initiative to study what makes dairy cows truly happy.
“A really happy cow is either eating, or laying down, or in the milking parlor being milked. And one of the things we’ve done with the university – The Dairyland Initiative, is look at how many hours a day that our cows lay down, and doing things that we can do to improve and make that number larger,” said Breunig.
Dr. Nigel Cook, Director of the Dairyland Initiative, has been working for a decade to help dairy farmers improve housing conditions to make cows more comfortable.
“It was really a vehicle to make sure producers that wanted to build a facility had the information they needed to do the best possible job,” said Dr. Cook.
A recent study focused on easing cow stress and creating a comfortable resting place. If a cow is resting, she’s ruminating and producing milk. The study also compared different bedding materials and found that cows laying on sand are more comfortable and rest longer.
With sand in place at Mystic Valley Dairy, they soon realized that the stalls weren’t large enough to comfortably accommodate a large cow, so they expanded the stall size.
“We made them wider, but then we also took out our brisket boards and we made them longer. And we immediately got more milk production out of our cows,” explained Breunig.
Cook added “She’s a metabolic athlete. We need her to have that down time, to get that rest. It gets her off her feet, and keeps her healthy.”
Another interesting observation through the Dairyland Initiative is that cows are allelomimetic, which means, they all like to do the same thing at the same time, and that includes resting, drinking and eating.
Source: WXOW
