"Moooove over, I need to stretch out," said the cow

In sticking with our recent theme, “Return of the crotch,” this week I give you, Return of Priya Motupalli. Priya is an animal welfare scientist studying dairy cattle behavior and welfare. Back in 2011 she enlightened Dog Spies readers about her research investigating cow preference for different housing systems. This is her second guest blog post on Dog Spies. If you’re wondering what’s the connection between cows and dogs, read on...
 

(Source)

RECENTLY I’ve been fascinated with the way I sleep. Not sleep itself, but the actual position I sleep in. I’ve been having some pretty horrific nightmares lately (I’ve been eating pizza really late at night while watching Gilmore Girls reruns, so you do the math), and I keep waking up hanging off the bed, arms and legs sprawled everywhere, my neck in weird CSI-dead-person-number-2 angles, and my sheets wrapped up around me in knots that would rival your Christmas lights

Really?

from 1994. It’s not pretty.
  
This got me thinking, if I could have a nickel for the number of people that think cows sleep standing up, I’d be richer than Christian Grey. I’d be even richer if I had a nickel for every person who thinks cow-tipping is a real thing. 

Cow Tipping?
Cows, like us, can achieve REM sleep only in particular positions (Ternman et al., 2012). Standing up is not one of them. So, you can’t tip a cow over while it’s sleeping because it doesn’t achieve deep sleep standing up.  See the logical fallacy? 

“No, she’s not dead…she’s sleeping!” I recently had a picture like this on a poster I presented at a well-known behaviour conference (that shall be left unnamed). The amount of people (in my OWN field) that asked why I have a picture of a dead cow on my poster was a little silly.

Also, anyone that has ever been around cows knows how difficult it is to sneak up on one: they have almost 360 degree panoramic vision, are quick to flee (like many prey animals), and generally weigh 700kg. Good luck tipping that over! 

Farmers and Scientists Think About Sleep
Farmers and scientists actually pay a great deal of attention to how cows rest. For dairy cows, the opportunity to lie down is particularly important, both from the cow’s point of view, and from a milk production point of view. 

Cow’s Perspective: 
Dairy cows that are deprived of the ability to lie down (even for as little as 3 hours), become even more motivated to lie down, to the point where lying takes priority over eating when given the choice between the two (Jensen et al., 2004). 

In case it’s not obvious, this is weird. Cows actually choose to rest over EATING! Eating is such a basic need for cows, and they really need to eat considering the demands placed on their bodies to continually produce milk. For lying to take precedence over eating, it suggests that lying down is incredibly essential.

When dairy cows are deprived of lying for longer periods of time (14+ hours), they actually develop abnormal behavioral patterns that suggest discomfort and frustration (Munksgaard and Simonsen, 1996), e.g., tongue-rolling, nose-pressing, etc. Equivalent behaviours in dogs might be tail-chasing, flank sucking, star-gazing, paw chewing etc. So, allowing for adequate lying behaviour is important for cow well-being.

Example of Nose-pressing: The black cow in the middle/back of photo is repeatedly applying strong pressure with its nose to the steel bar for long periods of time. Again, this behaviour is believed to be present only when the animal is behaviourally frustrated and its basic needs are not being met. (Source)

Production Perspective:  
Cows deprived of lying have the potential to produce less milk. When deprived of lying, cows produce less growth hormone (Haley et al., 2000), a hormone that is important for milk yields (I’m talking GH actually produced by the cow, not rGBH here). Additionally, when cows are prevented from lying down, the body cannot respond to stress as it usually would, and so changes occur as part of the normal stress response. These changes can lead to chronic stress (Munksgaard and Simonsen, 1996). Understandably, chronic stress decreases milk yields. Finally, rumination time (cud chewing) and blood flow to the udder (both good indicators of milk yield) are higher when cows are lying down rather than standing (Haley et al., 2000). Since the very existence of the dairy industry is reliant on milk production, this presents a pretty fundamental problem if dairy cows aren’t able to lie down.

TWINS!

Since I spend about 16 hours a day during my PhD literally watching cows, I’ve noticed how long they spend lying and in how many positions they actually lie! They lie just like ginormous dogs. They lie with their front legs stretched out, they lie flat on their sides, they lie curled up like a rolly polly, head up, head down, YOU NAME IT!

TWINS!

In summary:

• Lying behaviour is important for both dairy cow well-being and for milk production.

• Cows need to lie down, just like dogs!

• The next step in research might be to try and quantify what is the preferred cow lying position. If deprived of that position, how does that affect cow well-being and production?

Signing out,
Priya Motupalli, MS Applied Animal Behaviour and Welfare
Harper Adams University

References:
Haley, D. B., J. Rushen, and A. M. De Passille. 2000. Behavioural indicators of cow comfort: activity and resting behaviour of dairy cows in two types of housing. Canadian journal of animal science. 80(2):257-263.

Jensen, M. B., L. Munksgaard, L. J. Pedersen, J. Ladewig, and L. Matthews. 2004. Prior deprivation and reward duration affect the demand function for rest in dairy heifers. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 88(12):1-11.

Munksgaard, L. and H. B. Simonsen. 1996. Behavioral and pituitary adrenal-axis responses of dairy cows to social isolation and deprivation of lying down. J Anim Sci 74(4):769-778.

Ternman, E., L. Hanninen, M. Pastell, S. Agenas, and P. P. Nielsen. 2012. Sleep in dairy cows recorded with a non-invasive EEG technique. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 140(12):25-32.