Most people regard cows as dull herd cattle that are there to produce milk and meat. Even when scientists are concerned with animals, it is usually about how milk and meat yields can be optimized. One of the few exceptions is a study that is currently underway in the science journal Current Biology has appeared. In it, a team led by animal psychologist Jan Langbein from the Leibniz Institute for Farm Animal Biology near Rostock describes a type of toilet training for cattle.
“Like many other animals and farm animals, cows are pretty smart and can learn a lot,” says Langbein. “Why shouldn’t they be able to learn how to use a toilet?” That sounds funny, but the study has a serious background. The excretion of cows is an environmental problem that should not be underestimated. If the animals are allowed to go to pasture, their faeces contaminate the soil and often also bodies of water in the long run. In addition, the ammonia in your urine is converted into nitrous oxide by microorganisms in the soil. This compound, chemically called nitrous oxide, is the third most important greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide and methane.
It sounds funny, but it has a serious background: It’s about the climate
The more often the cows are allowed outside, the more animal-friendly the keeping, the greater the problem. To get the animals to go to the toilet, as it were, by encouraging them to leave their excretions in a place where they can be properly disposed of “would help to solve this dilemma,” the authors write. In this way, climate protection and animal-friendly husbandry could be reconciled.
In their study, the scientists subjected 16 calves to a type of toilet training. In the first step, the animals were locked up, so to speak, in the toilet, a demarcated area in the barn lined with artificial turf. Every time they accidentally urinated or dropped flat cakes there, they were rewarded with food.
In a second phase, the calves were returned to pasture, but had free access to their latrine. To get there, they had to go into the stable and through a swing gate that they could push open with their head. If they managed to do that and urinated or mucked where they should, they would be rewarded again. If, on the other hand, the animals dropped their remains in the barn on the way to the toilet, the scientists punished them with a jet of water. “The first thing we did as a punishment was to use headphones in the animals’ ears, which gave off a very unpleasant sound when they urinated outside,” says Langbein. “But they didn’t care.”
In this way, eleven of the 16 calves learned to control themselves within a few weeks until they reached the toilet. Langbein is confident that with a little more training you could get the remaining five to do the same. How quickly calves get involved in using a toilet depends, among other things, on the individual personality of the animals. It has been known for a long time that not all cows are the same and that every animal deals with a new situation differently.