‘Cow Whisperer’ links cow behavior to prey instincts

Adelia Ladson

October 16, 2008 11:17 pm

— MOULTRIE — Just how valid are those commercials about California and its “happy” cows? Is that something the average dairy farmer should be worried out?
Dr. Jan Shearer, a veterinarian with the University of Florida, thinks so.
“Animal welfare has become a major issue for us in the livestock industry,” he said.
Shearer has been a veterinarian since he graduated from the University of Florida in 1975. He has been on staff there for 26 years. His “Cow Whisperer” seminar is a new presentation that was added to the dairy events at this year’s Sunbelt Agricultural Expo. Shearer said he did not know “how it was coming off” but the people coming through were not necessarily dairy farmers. They were people who seemed to be looking for an opportunity to learn a little more about the dairy industry.
He said there seemed to be a lot of misunderstanding about the livestock industry.
“Sometimes they get the wrong impression from what they see on T.V.,” he said.
He said he believed it was important to keep the “ancient contract,” referencing the Bible, between animals and humans.
“The ancient contract between animals is they provide us with food and fiber and we provide them with appropriate care. ... My purpose here today is to talk about the five senses and how animals perceive their environment,” he said.
He said that animals react very differently, especially “prey type” animals like cow. They are not aggressive like carnivores.
“They’re hardwired in their brain as prey animals. Just like deer are,” Shearer said.
He said, however, with dairy cattle it was less obvious because they have so much contact with humans from the start. Whereas beef cattle were going to be less trusting of humans.
“Every bit of their behavior is traceable to those instincts,” he said.
He said humans learning about the animal’s behavior will facilitate the cows being “happier” and more comfortable. He said doing things to make them comfortable will make them less distressed.
During the seminar, he talked to his audience about the vision, hearing, taste, smell and touch senses of a cow while John Bernard, dairy scientist at the University of Georgia, brought a dairy cow to show.
He told them that the key to being a “whisperer” is to really understand how the animals perceive their environment.
He started out by explaining to how a cow’s vision worked.
“Sight is the dominant sense in all cattle and prey type animals,” he said.
He asked them if they thought cows could see in color or only black and white. He then informed them that cows have excellent color vision and see oranges, yellows, and reds. He said they also have the ability to see things move over the horizon.
“Eyesight is a very important thing in cattle and [they] use it effectively,” he said.
He said the hearing was another important sense that they could use pretty effectively. He said jokingly that if a tree fell in the woods and a person wanted to know where it fell, they could just look in the direction their cow was staring.
He said smell was an important sense because they used it to detect pheromones and this was very important for communication in the animals. He also told the audience that cows could detect and distinguish between sweet and bitter tastes. The ability to detect bitterness keeps them from eating toxic plants.
“Cows are very sensitive to taste and smell,” he said.
He said this was very important for a farmer to know when making decisions of feed.
Shearer said, as far as the sense of touch, the cow has very good pain receptors all over the body. However, their reaction to pain can be subtle and it was sometime hard to tell if they were in pain or ill. He told them that when cows are ill they will sit off by themselves, put their head down, and “become depressed.” He said it was very important for a farmer to notice these changes in his cattle, so that he could determine if they are ill or in pain.
Shearer said the subtleness was an instinctive thing going back to cattle being “prey animals.” In the wild, animals that show weakness are the ones that get eaten first.
“They have all the instincts of prey animals,” he said.
In closing, he said cows were very easy animals to work with and very docile as a rule.
“What makes them dangerous at times is we forget how they perceive us,” he said.

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