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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.
Fuck meat and diary consumers.
Think of the trees !
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
Cows aren't really that smart or independent. A cow will not go off on its own to take a crap. Nor will it be smart enough to realize why it is getting food.
Most likely you'll just have cows accidentally get a treat, the other cows will see this, become jealous, and then crowd the reward bowl until they break it.
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.
That would be slightly disgusting, but hey, if screwing with meat floats your boat....
Personally I don't mind animals suffering for my pleasure - in fact, looking at my gadgets and my way of living, I'd go as far as apparently, I don't mind humans suffering for my pleasure. I wear clothes produced by cheap labor in India, I use computers produced by cheap labor in China, I eat meat produced under horrible conditions; however, it does make my life pretty nice.
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 for other meat, virtually all dairy and meat cattle in the UK and Ireland lives outdoors in fields as the seasons permit. Veal is virtually taboo these days though I would not be surprised if animals are exported for consumption on the continent. Sheep live outdoors. Pigs may or may not, but again there are free range choices. My parents live near a pig farm and the animals all live in large outdoor pens.
I'm sure also that the various organic / soil association type organisations supplement the legal definition with their own criteria that members must follow. So vote with your wallet. Getting all precious that people eat meat is not going to change anything.
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!
Indeed, dairy cows know when and where their udders are going to get relief and will walk themselves to the milking yard (or stable, or barn, or whatever the fuck those rural types call it).
There's a footbridge over the M6 motorway just south of Sandbach which will have cows crossing it just after 6am, no farmer/dogs/tractors in sight, because they know it's milking time.
Perhaps the answer is to use a cork to stop them going until they're in the right place. They clearly respond to the physical relief caused by being emptied.
(Either that or the pleasure of having their tits squeezed. Hmm. Self-service milking machines positioned over grating?)
I opened this story specifically to suggest that.
Not because I think it's practical, but because watching a farmer trying to change one would be a fantastic spectator sport.
You're right about fertilizing pastures.
But what is nature? Humans are just as much a part of this planet's fauna as any other species. Harmony in nature is a myth and a fallacy. It's strange that some Darwinists believe it, since Darwinism itself contradicts it. Survival of the fittest is hardly harmonious.
If you hate humanity so much, maybe you should go live harmoniously with your animal friends. I'm sure they'd be glad to have you for dinner.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
"Notice how pet animals tend to be animals that have dens or burrows?"
What does that say about mothers and their basements?
So plants should suffer instead? Have you seen how they grow plants these days? Most of them don't ever get to put their roots in soil, but are grown on horrible artificial conditions!
Where does your do good end? Is your clothes made under proper sustainable conditions? How about your computer? Your car? Furniture?
If I had the money to live "right", I'd (probably) do it, but for me to live the way I want, someone has to suffer. Sure I could forgo the telly, the car, the flushing toilet - I could probably live on vegs for a decade or two before dying from malnutrition. (Oh did someone just say vitamin supplement? You know what suffered to make those pills? Pigs.)
Spare me the feel good, do-gooder bullshit. You might think you are doing it right, but fact is, people, plants and animals are suffering just the same for you to live your way.
And the girls asks "So what do you do for a living?" ...
Parrots can be trained to shit on command, or to fly to specific spot to shit. But they are probably smarter than cows.
I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
If poor hygiene causes disease then farmers care about. Disease means higher veterinary bills, and poorer quality animals worth less at the end. Obviously, if fixing the hygiene problem costs more than the gain in efficiency is worth then the high intensity farmers will let the cattle stand around in shit.
It seems to me that if you want the cows to shit themselves, all you'd need to do is show them a video of what awaits them at the end of their life.
I actually do grow a significant portion of my family's food. Maybe one-quarter of the meat and 1/10th the vegetables. We could make that 100% of our meat and maybe one-quarter of our vegetables, but there would be no variety in our diet. Even the small portion of our diet I produce is a lot of work. Why do I bother? Simple: I developed an interest in how my food was produced. Toured a livestock feedlot (ie. finishing), a chicken operation, and a pig operation. Both from an animal suffering and an environmental impact point-of-view, I was...disappointed. Frankly, it is hard for me to imagine a way that these sorts of enterprises could be made acceptable.
Pastured livestock operations, which I've been periferally involved in most of my life, can certainly be done with an arguably positive environmental impact and a minimum of animal suffering. That's what I've been concentrating on. It's work and I've definitely lost a fair bit of money doing it.
One point I've come to realize is that annual crop production (grain, vegetables, and most fruit) is an environmental nightmare. With the exception of tree- and perennial-based production, there simply isn't a way to produce plant food that doesn't involve killing most of the other plant species on your food production plot. Sure you can cover-crop and under-sow, but you still have bare-ground for a significant part of the year. Mulching just smothers all the plants outside your crop rows. Permaculture is interesting, but I'm not sure how realistic it is outside of temperature regions.
It bothers me a lot to think about this, so I try not to.
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.
Never stand behind a coughing cow.
Hey, Mom! Is it beer, yet?