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Can You Potty Train a Cow?
sciencehabit writes "Think potty training a child is hard? Try teaching a cow when and where to do its business. The bovines can defecate nine to 16 times daily, creating big hygiene problems on dairy and beef farms. So cueing the animals to go in the right place would be a big help for managing manure. But past techniques—including training cows to respond to mild electric shocks—have proven ineffective or impractical for wide use. To see if they could come up with a better potty prompt, scientists tested a series of stimuli on a dozen Holstein cows. The milkers stood in or walked through a footbath filled with water, for example, or had air or water sprayed on their feet. Alas, '[n]one of our tests reliably stimulated defecation,' the team reports."
I love when the headline question is answered right there in the summary.
Ladies and gentlemen: Slashdot in 2013.
From the summary: [quote]The bovines can defecate nine to 16 times daily, creating big hygiene problems on dairy and beef farms[/quote]
Farmers are interested in two things above all the rest: costs and production. So my guess is that it's not about hygiene, but about lowering costs. Although mildly interesting from a science point of view, this research is of course mainly to lower costs and then I think to myself: divine bovine, please shit where you stand.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Standing still in a small area with no access to sun light or stimuli isn't enough.
Now you have to shit on order and be semi-tortured into doing so.
Fuck meat and diary consumers.
Why should bovine defecate on one same place? That's another ill-minded human stupidity. Cows evolved chewing GRASS, not CORN on the field. And field needs composting EVERYWHERE. Isn't that obvious? The only species that doesn't fit right are humans. Other beings live in harmony with Nature.
The researchers could do far worse than consult the sub-continental experts on the other side of the planet.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
The key is control of the bowel moo-vements.
A friend of mine often took her parrot on her finger and shook her hand to make it poo.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
If this is successful we should try to apply this on human subjects.
http://pix11.com/2013/02/13/feces-all-over-the-floor-carnival-cruise-nightmare-continues-for-trapped-passengers/#axzz2KxRLOguE
Maybe if they gave each of the cows more space to roam, and they ate grass instead of corn, it might not be so bad for them, the "farmers", and for the consumer
Manure management? What manure management? That's a byproduct of factory farming. Just obey the law of nature and you can be as successful as any factory farmer and protect the environment.
Someone needs to come up with a system where the cows receive a reward immediately upon defacating in the nominated area. I.e. When the cow stands on the grate facing the right way and drops a pat, some tasty treats appear in a bowl at mouth level. Other cows which are ready to drop and wanting their reward would hustle any cubicle-occupiers out of the area, ensuring a good level of throughput and discouraging the cows from hanging around in the toilets like naughty schoolchildren (minus cigarettes)
Nappies, that solves it.
There is no way in hell a cow is going to poop in a specific place. They crap everywhere, constantly. It's just their response to most events.
Many a time a cow raised its posture, stared me directly in the eyes, and then crapped itself with a defiant glare.
No shit Sherlock
but they go there anyway. So I trained the dogs to only chase the chickens when they go on the deck and pool. That works pretty good if the dogs are outside. One of the chickens flew out of the back yard the other day and a big crow cornered her in a hydrangea at the front of the house. I came to see what all the commotion was and scared the crow away. The chicken waddled behind me into the back yard and she hasn't flown out since.
How did this even show up here.. What dipshit submitted this? What was wrong with whoever approved it?
And why can't we kill them both to improve the planet? Now there's a question i really want answered!
This research smells like a future Ig Nobel:
http://www.improbable.com/ig/
You can imagine why. It takes a lot of time with intelligent beings, aka toddlers. It will very likely take much more with cows.
Maybe cow napkins can help, just like they use to do with horses involved in parades!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
From the abstract, it sounds as if they made no attempt at all to train the cows -- they were just seeing what would stimulate a cow to poop with no training at all. Or, they were seeing what's the least that counts as a master's thesis! A much more interesting question.
Seems like the obvious solution would involve herding them into the right place and then have a portly Texan setup a BBQ in front.. or maybe that bengal tiger from Life of Pi would do the trick.
Not sure how it would affect milk yields though.
Speaking of cows I need a Red Bull. Okay to answer their question before they wasted the time, no it can't be done for a simple reason. Grazing animals are hardwired to go at will. Notice how pet animals tend to be animals that have dens or burrows? Evolution has adapted them to this condition so they go in one location so they don't soil their dens. Predators have the same ability even when they don't den. Primates do it as well probably because of tree dwelling origins. Evacuating bowels requires muscles that in upright animals is used in locomotion as well as four legged animals on the move as in stalking prey. Notice horses don't go a gallop. I guess you could keep the cows on a treadmill but it would cause severe problems if they kept it up too long. I'm sure over thousands of years they could adapt but it's a waste of time. Let them roam in a field they way they were adapted to live. They'll perfect engineered meat and milk long before you could adapt a cow. I even managed in my caffeine deprived state to get it back onto a Slashdot subject, engineered meat. That's the real solution to the waste problem not teaching cows to cross their legs.
Do cows have any control over their droppings at all? IIRC they do not have a sphincter that could be controlled consciously. Isn't it more like it comes out simply according to the cows bowel movements?
bickerdyke
as a child I visited a farm in France, the cows were gathered in a covered concreted area, the farmer called "aller vite vite vite", the cows would then defecate. The gates were opened and the cows returned to the fields. A motorized boom then scrapped the shit into a slurry pit.
I'm pretty sure the cows still crapped every where else but to a 10 year old kid the whole process was pretty amazing.
I lost any respect I ever might have had for bovine kind when I witnessed the miracle of life one day. A newborn calf so fresh it was still wet stumbled gingerly up to Momma, looking for a teat to suck.
The calf approached from the rear, and right as it got in range, BLAAAAAAAAAAAAT!!! Moma took a huge steaming crap right on widdle baby's head.
It was OK though. While the crap was still dribbling out, she unleashed a fire hose of urine right in the calf's face and washed most of the crap off. Momma cows care, people. Momma cows care!
Readers Digest said so in the 70s
Bart: Uh dad... I don't think the dog can handle anymore bacon.
Homer: Looks like he's about ready for another squeezing.
I have noticed that people wearing boots (especially if a size to big, so it acts as a funnel) with short pants or with pants inside (versus hanging over) the boot tend to see the veal take a shit right in there if standing behind one. Seriously it ain't funny anymore.
"Rinder-Roulette"
http://www.usinger-land-extra.de/allgemeine-seiten/artikel.html?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=4450&cHash=1b37101e2f
have i stumbled on an alternate gizmodo?
"Notice how pet animals tend to be animals that have dens or burrows?"
What does that say about mothers and their basements?
There is an old saying: two wrongs don't make a right.
Lying is wrong. Breaking the law is wrong. Lying to the Nazi's about how you are illegally keeping Anne Frank in your attic is right. Sometimes two wrongs can make a right.
However, I agree with you. Animals should be treated better and vegetarianism is a noble choice.
Now if only we combined the wrongs associated with our penchant for meat-eating, the wrongs of our love of processed foods and the wrongs of our genetically engineering without long-term testing to make some mass-produced, tasty meat-in-a-lab, and we might be able to turn meat eating into right as well...
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
I'm going to get vegetarians and vegans up in arms, but we already treat cows as an industrial product. Why bother trying to get them to defecate with external stimuli. Just go all the way and solve it technically. Just attach a tube to the rectum and pump the manure away to a storage area. Neat and clean.
Don't want the product to suffer? Alter the brain chemistry with pharmaceuticals, so the product is unaware of its condition.
# touch universe # chmod +rwx universe #
The methane is odorless, the smell comes from other chemicals and bacteria, By covering the waste to capture methane you would also reduce odor pollution too.
Once the methane has been extracted what remains is a great organic fertilizer.
It is not as sexy as windmills and solar arrays but it is a good viable path. But, alas, USA is never going to go this path. The hydraulic fracking breakthrough has dropped the price of natural gas so low, now it is not worth capturing methane to sell off. Only if there is any kind of credit for not emitting the methane into the atmosphere, odor pollution abatement and value of organic fertilizer works out farmers will invest on this low tech solution. Pond the waste, cover it with thick plastic, capture the gas, separate the methane, and chimney up the noxious pollutants. The break even cost was working out to a dairy farm of at least 1000 cows at the height of oil price spike. Now it is likely to be at 4000 or 5000 cows. Practically impossible in USA.
It would be a great boon for India and China though. Hope it works out
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Evacuating bowels requires muscles that in upright animals is used in locomotion as well as four legged animals on the move as in stalking prey.
This doesn't explain why you can fart whilst running for a bus... Cracks me up every time.
And the girls asks "So what do you do for a living?" ...
each walking from pasture to their own little barn.
I'm sure it's just a matter of time before these cows master pottying (as cats can use toilets).
Shocking them, however, isn't the way... Maybe import some good Swiss cow trainers...?
a maths professor and a spherical cow.
Can you train your pet scorpion not to sting you? No you cannot.
Grazing animals are hardwired to go at will.
Alpacas don't fit that criteria.
I wonder if Red Bull would make them defecate?
The study is flawed, it treats defecation as the problem. Poop is the problem, defecation is the solution.
"What a piece of work is a cow! how now in reason!
how infinite in lactation! in form and moooving how
express and admoooable...''
~Captain Jean Luc Picard, USS Enterprise: Cow Greeting, Alpha Prime
Bovidae in Absurdiae Gloria. Being a treatise on sundry bovidae topics as: Cow Greetings. Cow Banners. Also may contain capricious claptrap. codswallop. and flapdoodle.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
If this is possible, people may use this it fix the cow patty bingo game normally found at county fairs.
The Brown Note, anyone?
Is my calendar broken? Is it April 1 already?
Popisms.com - Connecting pop culture
Did somone wake up and say lets come up with a wierd question that the answer is NO? Why not post... Can we drink Cat Milk?
If that doesn't work you can bop the cow on the head with a rolled up newspaper and rub its nose in it.
You're thinking of pigs and chickens ... generally kept in dark cages indoors for their entire lives.
One of reasons that pigs are raised in small pens and cows are not, is because it is easy to potty train a pig. They will instinctively defecate as far as possible from their food trough. They are sometimes kept as indoor pets, and can be trained to use a newspaper or litter box with less effort than training a puppy to do the same.
I managed to potty train my fat wife.
If they can make a camera that looks like elephant dung (Elephants - Spy in the Herd` 2003) and machines that mow the lawn.
How difficult can it be do make a robot that runs around the prairie scooping up cowshit automatically?
really? potty train cows, or build a machine to scoop shit...
hell, considering what you could get the costs down to, implant a sensor on each cows ass that detects a fecal event, and spits out the gps location-- per unit you could likely get them down to less than $100 per cow, it would be comparable to branding them, the gps tracker could be used in other ways, and recycled to the next cow with battery changes & sterilization on the point of final processing....
.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
So there!
My Aunt in Wyoming has a Cow that thinks it's a dog. Long story short, her daughter thought the calf was getting too cold in the barn, they have a large house and the aunt caved to let the calf come into the house during the winter. The calf made friends with the dogs, and followed their every move, including going outside to defecate.
Now the calf has grown into a Cow, and still comes inside with the dogs (They don't use air conditioning and keep doors open during the summer, the house is a flipping barn). It still is potty trained and will not go inside the house.
The answer is, you CAN potty train a cow / calf on an individual basis. So many of these problems would be solved if you would get out into the field and talk to some ranchers / rural hillbillies. /Yes my family is weird, I have accepted this and moved far away from them.
I felt like everyone kind of missed the obvious joke.
Let them roam in a field they way they were adapted to live. They'll perfect engineered meat and milk long before you could adapt a cow.
Or we could tear down fences and install more Bison, and let them roam free. Then when you wanted some meat you could just plug one. As a "side" benefit they will help extend grasslands.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You should see what I went through with Eric, my fish.
You're more like an "animal torturer" than you realize. You personify animals. The only difference is that the "animal torturer" enjoys the supposed suffering, while you are bothered by it. Either way is illogical.
See if you can get the cows to control defecation for a strong stimulus.
If that doesn't work, then your hosed. If it does, then you have a starting point.
So prove the premise, then develop, doing the other way arounf can be a huge waste of time.
there has to be some physiological activities to take place before they defecate. why don't they monitor the animal and find out the signals that are occurring. Then they might at least have an opportunity to react to it. Like maybe a Bluetooth transponder that summons a little poop bot ....I'm just sayin'
"The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing
If we can take grain + yeast and get beer, then why can't we design a yeast-variant that produces milk? After all, grass and wheat are very similar.
Of course we might not get all the complex proteins and enzymes required to make good cheese - but it should be possible to get a perfectly decent product for putting in coffee, making ice-cream, and pouring over cereal. A cow is a terribly inefficient way to convert grass into milk - we should be able to do better.
Note, we've gotten to this strange point where people think any mention of WWII evokes Godwin's Law. The law was originally intended to stop unthinking analogies, not apt analogies, nor, as in this case, contextualized ethical examples or moral dilemmas.
Thus, I am forced to hereby invent and evoke a new law: Greenwald's Law.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
This story is total bullshit, if you ask me.
I learned from a friend who read a book (true story), that a good portion of the USA's greenhouse gases are from raising cattle. But it doesn't HAVE to be that way -- the cows are releasing a lot of methane because they have a hard time digesting the food industrial farms give them; corn.
Since the corn tears up their stomachs, they are given antibiotics. Another factoid is that if they weren't slaughtered in 2 years, they'd probably die anyway from the ravages of their diet. But that works out conveniently, because "Mad Cow" was never eradicated -- they just started a policy of not allowing the Bulls to live beyond 18 months; mad cow doesn't develop, problem solved.
So the whole "pooping in the wrong place" problem is due to not being in a grass field -- where it isn't a problem. The Green House gases problem is due to cows not eating grass. And so is the mad cow disease (not being fed other cows). Add on the bacteria resistance, hormones and other deleterious elements of modern beef on the human diet -- and we've got a situation where almost all the problems we face with cows are due to the unnatural nature of how we raise them.
That would still leave the many gallons of water to produce one pound of beef. We're better off raising Ostriches.
If Famers had to pay a "methane" tax -- we'd solve this issue in a year.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Never stand behind a coughing cow.
Hey, Mom! Is it beer, yet?
A treadmill wouldn't work forever. Dogs if left on a treadmill long enough and they have to go bad enough WILL soil themselves WHILE running. I would imagine horses and cows are the same.
From the paper's abstract
"None of our tests reliably stimulated defecation, which seemed to occur most when cows were exposed to novelty."
Going to www.novelties.com redirects to www.bobbleheads.com, so we can only conclude that the study needs more bobbleheads (it has enough cowbell, I think).
Gross.
Have they tried squeezing them? I'm imagining something resembling a car wash, but with giant foam cow squeezers instead of brushes.
Grazing animals are hardwired to go at will.
This is not necessarily true. These people have done it, and say that training a young horse to go outside to relieve herself was actually easier than with their dogs.
Captcha is "meadow," which is a good place to pee.
It's a product. They even bag it and sell it. I heard that in Argentina they "solve" this problem by rotating the fields between grazing and agricultural production. The combination of nitrogen fixing plants and cattle grazing restores the fertility of the fields. IIRC, it was 7 years of grazing and one or two years of corn growing per cycle. The only way we get continuous corn production is by dumping massive quantities of petrochemical fertilizer on GMO'd crops.
Cow poop a problem? No. It's a solution.
If potty training a cow is like potty training a child, where you teach them to only go on the potty, maybe not.
If potty training a cow is like potty training a dog, where you teach them not to go potty in the house, it can definitely be done.
We had a series of family cows, and I didn't like the mess they made in the barn, so I started training them not to urinate or defecate in the barn. It took some time, but it was pretty successful. It isn't that hard. She gives a pretty definite warning when she is about to make a mess. She lifts her tail. That's when you shoo her out of the barn and wait for her to finish her business. Then let her back in and finish milking. It only takes a few weeks before she usually does her business before the milking or after.
I found the Jerseys learned much quicker than the Holstein.
...keep looking, Watson!
Almond or soy milk.
I can't validate this as being true, but family stories of my great-grandfather, a simple pig farmer in Montana, was able to condition and train his cows to crap in the barn. He also grew corn to feed to his pigs, and even encouraged having beavers on his land to create dams. He always sold every pig at auction, sometimes as a larger profit than other pig farmers.
How? The secrets died with him.
you forgot the GALLONS of piss flowing out of the cow
but the thing that worries me is that if you teach a cow to control it's bowels you give it a weapon that it can use against humans.