Effective communication is a critical component of successful farms. In his best-selling book, “The Five Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace,” Gary Chapman defines the importance of understanding how people send and receive verbal communication. He describes five languages of time, gifts, words, touch and service that improve communication.
Learning how other people receive information will improve communication and motivation. A famous quote by Maya Angelou states that “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Effective communication and motivation begin with understanding other people’s specific language.
Likewise, cows will respond when farmers speak their language. Cows communicate in many ways. A farmer who properly interprets their cows and can speak “cow” can bring out the best in each of their animals. Like the infamous Dr. Dolittle, who walked, talked and spoke with the animals, farmers who speak both English and cow can get their cows to perform to Olympic standard. In return, the cows have long, healthy lives that provide for a profitable, multigenerational farm.
How do cows communicate?
We know cows do not speak words, but cows communicate very effectively through their posture, behavior, physical appearance and performance. This article will give a brief overview of how cows send and receive sensory communication signals and how technology — both current and future — is being used to read and interpret cows on dairy farms.
Sensory signal
Dairy cows use their five senses (eyes, ears, nose, feet, tongue) to evaluate their environment and respond with various signals to communicate with the farmer. The signals include changes in posture, gait, tail, digestive system and chewing behavior to communicate.
God created cows with a flight-or-fight response compared to animals that have a fight response, like lions. Stressed cows will bunch and flee. Cows have the inborn drive for survival and protection. Their two drives are for food/water and the desire to express normal cow behavior (herding, mothering, bunching). Cows will exhibit fear and distress to avoid discomfort and pain. If cows are exhibiting what appears to be abnormal behavior, the observant farmer will evaluate the situation and remove the stressor.
An example I observed from a high-production New York herd was cows crowded around the water tanks, lapping water with their tongues. Normal behavior is immersing their muzzles into the water and drinking. Stray voltage was present in the tank, and grounding the voltage stopped the lapping and crowding around the waterers.
Cows bunching is a behavioral response to stress. Hot weather, biting flies, radiant direct sunlight, flocking bird sounds, high-pitched squeaking sounds, flashing lightning or loud thunder are stressors that cause cows to bunch. Cows will flee when exposed to stress or sudden loud noises (barking dog, thunder). Cows have a wide field of vision with eyes on both sides of their heads, but have poor depth perception and cannot see directly in front of their nose. They also have the ability to hear higher frequencies (squeaking fan) than humans, but have difficulty pinpointing the location of the sound source. Thus, a barking dog in the distance, a fire siren or a squeaky fan can induce fear and cause cows to panic and bunch together. An exception to the flight response of cows is when a cow has a calf at her side. Mother cows will defend and attack the intruder to protect their young calf.
In the wild and before domestication, cows and their offspring in the open range would bunch together with the vulnerable young calves in the center of the herd as a predator approached. The herd would also flee to a forest for protection. I experienced this natural behavior on a safari in Kenya, Africa. Hundreds of casually grazing wildebeest (cow-like animals) quickly grouped together and ran toward the forest as two leopards crouched and approached the wildebeest herd.
Cows have an incredible ability with their noses and tongues to smell and taste various odors and flavors, such as feed, air and urine. Cows use their noses to smell unique pheromone odors, giving ability to detect a female herd mate in estrus. They can taste off-feed flavors in Total Mixed Ration (TMR), even if no mold, manure or poorly fermented silage is visibly present. Even a small chunk of poorly fermented silage that gets mixed into a six-ton TMR batch will limit feed intake to high-production cows. Clean barns, TMR and feed bunks are important.
Cows have sensory feel in their skin and feet. A cow’s tail will swat a fly that lands on their skin. Excessive tail switching informs the farm to take action. A bruise or sore toe on a cow’s hoof results in an altered gait or hunched back by the observant farmer.
Cattle are very sensitive to stray voltage from housing or milking parlor electrical systems. An improperly installed or poorly operating electrical system of fans, waterers, parlors or automated robotic milking systems can wreak havoc on the cow’s nervous system. Cows are much more sensitive to stray electricity than humans. Somatic cell count (SCC), health, reproduction and production fail as a result of intermittent or continuous stray voltage. Your annual farm audit should include a competent and experienced team to include a cow’s behavior and comfort audit (cowsignals.com), along with a metered voltage evaluation in the parlor and barns.
Production and health measurements. Dairy Herd Improvement Association (DHIA) has been around for decades and was the first system to provide production and component values on dairy cows. In my early years, I milked cows in a stanchion barn with bucket milkers suspended from straps under the cow’s belly and milk buckets dumped into a dump station. We watched standing heats as the cows were turned out. We depended heavily on personal observation and cow habits to evaluate the cows.
Many dairy farms now utilize wearable data sensors (like a Fitbit or Apple Watch) that measure each cow’s steps for activity level, jaw movements for ruminations and body temperature. This data, along with milking parlor or robotic daily milk weights, milk components, Milk Urea Nitrogen (MUN), SCC and body weight, is all summarized into computer systems that alerts the farmer on cows to breed, evaluate for health or assess for lameness. What will the future bring?
The future of dairy data
The recent Tri-State Dairy Nutrition Conference provided insight into the future of dairy farm technology and the future of artificial intelligence (AI) in dairy farms. AI will have advanced applications on dairy farms in two ways. AI can be used to produce data summary results faster and cheaper than current systems. The result can be savings in time and labor.
An example is where a live cloud-based alert is sent to the farmer on a sick cow that can be sorted and treated quickly. A second AI application is when new information is generated from advanced sensor data, which provides the farmer with innovative solutions and improved decision-making.
An example of the future is a cow-wearable GPS sensor with barn cameras that measure each cow’s movement and measure each cow’s feed intake. Individual cow feed intake will allow the farmer to select for phenotypic feed efficiency. As feed cost is the single highest cost on the dairy, reducing feed cost with more efficient cows is possible.
Imagine a future where cows produce more milk on 10% less TMR! Nutrition and feeding AI technology will advance by using camera sensors to conduct live TMR image analysis of particle size in the feed mixer. Improved ration, TMR consistency and mix time are the result. Feed innovation is possible with unmanned harvesting of fresh forages similar to the Lely Exos system. This has the potential to reduce forage fermentation losses and increase forage digestibility. The future of dairy farming will include more technology. The farmer will be required to provide oversight to manage the cows, but nothing will replace a good farmer who can speak and interpret “cow.”
Why it matters
The dairy industry continues to evolve and change with technology and innovation. Get ready, as the digital age provides more data and more information. But one thing that will not change is the ability to speak and interpret “cow” and understand that the individual dairy cow in your herd is important, whether a small or large herd. Individual care for cows is critical. Cows make the milk that makes up the dairy farm! But like Dr. Dolittle, the farmer and herd managers that walk with the cows, talk with the cows and moo and grunt with cows will have their cows talking and producing for them. The result can be a profitable, multigenerational family farm.
