While it is still at the experimental stage, if successful it could significantly reduce nitrogen loss on farms because it would help farmers better capture cow effluent before it made its way into waterways. It would improve hygiene in dairy sheds and give farmers greater control over where effluent is applied on pasture.
The average cow produces about 70 litres of effluent per day, of which 10 per cent is generated during milking. Compounding the effluent problem is the amount of water used by farmers to wash down the dairy shed after milking, which is collected and stored in effluent ponds.
STUFF
Scientists are trying to toilet train dairy cows.
AgResearch forage scientist Luke Cooney said he came up with the concept during a conference last year.
“We were discussing ideas on how to mitigate the environmental impacts of dairy farming and we tossed this potty training idea back and forth. It obviously has a humorous side but the underlying idea is sound and we decided it had merit and could be of real use to farmers if it worked.
“So we’re now trying to answer the question: can we reduce N loss on farms by rewarding animals for urinating in a designated area?”
Cooney and fellow forage scientist Kiliana Bekelaar started by training eight calves in a penned off area on a paddock on a Manawatū farm.
These calves were moved to a “potty stall” which had a remote-controlled feeding station at one end. The calves were then rewarded for urinating or defecating in front of the feeding station.
After six weeks and 60 training sessions, they allowed the calves free access to the stalls to see if the calves would enter to urinate or defecate.
“We have recently finished this testing so it is too early to know whether the training significantly increased urination events in the “potty”. We will need to analyse the data over the next few months.”
He hoped to have that analysis finished by the end of June
Cooney said overseas scientists have also tried to toilet train cows. One group had some promising results and were able to encourage urination in young calves using a milk reward.
“The lead author from that study, Alison Vaughan, is actually a consultant on this project. Another group has recently invented a cattle toilet which stimulates urination by massaging a nerve by the udders.”
Strategies one uses to potty train pets are not suitable for cattle because the animals showed no natural latrine behaviour. Cows also had less of an aversion to faecal contamination than cats or dogs, Cooney said.
“Also, it was key for us to develop a system that was scalable and could be automated if successful. For that reason, one-on-one training was out of the question.”
Moving the research from testing to a commercial dairy farm will be more of a challenge and required developing an automated system that can detect cow urination and defecation in a target zone and dispense rewards.
