The future of cow-moo-nication is here

Imagine having the ability to understand your cattle herd and cater to their needs accordingly, possibly with the help of some sort of device? It’s not as out-of-reach as you think…

Sydney-based scientist and University of Sydney PhD candidate, Alexandra Green, is currently studying cattle bio-acoustics, which is essentially the pitch of a cow’s ‘moo’ to understand what it is trying to say.

This ‘udderly’ innovative idea stems from Green’s fascination with animal behaviour. She draws inspiration from the late naturalist, Charles Darwin and renowned cattle scientist, Temple Grandin who has studied the vocal behaviour of animals.

Green’s research involves recording the vocalisations of dairy heifers and trying to work out what they are saying in response to different circumstances, in hope of improving on-farm welfare and productivity. And for dairy farmers, knowing what cows are thinking could prove invaluable.

“In Australia, we are seeing herd sizes increase and less labour available, meaning it is increasingly difficult to monitor stock,” Green tells farmmachinerysales.com.au.

“If we can interpret vocalisations, there is potential to use this as a non-invasive behavioural monitoring tool on-farm to assess animal welfare and condition. This could help farmers immensely.”

Green believes that further down the track, there is potential to develop technologies to either complement existing ones such as cow collars to detect mating behaviour, or to purely assess the cows’ welfare and condition.

She is still in the early stages of collecting vocalisation data from cattle and is yet to fully analyse it using acoustic analysis software, but she’s hopeful that the day will come when farmers will be able to analyse their own cattle vocalisations using readily available technology.

Initial observations

“I currently have 18 Holstein-Friesian heifers and have recorded their vocalisations in response to partial or full isolation. Half of the girls were exposed to partial isolation, where they were left in the farm yard for 30 minutes and had full vision of their herdmates,” she says.

“The other half of the girls were exposed to full isolation where they had no vision of their herd mates for 30 mins. I am now going to ‘cross-over’ the trial, so the girls who were exposed to partial isolation will now be fully isolated and vice versa.”

From her initial observations, the number of vocalisations depended on the individual cattle’s personality. Some of the heifers vocalised hundreds of times over the course of their isolation, while some kept quiet and remained very calm.

Green has also recorded the vocalisations of these 18 heifers in response to oestrus (wanting to be mated) and feed anticipation, and is about to look into response to feed frustration (where some eat while others watch on).

She noticed as an animal gets aroused or excited, its call features will change, as exhibited in many other mammalian species. Many call features can change and if an animal is more aroused, it may start calling more frequently, and the pitch may increase.

“The number of calls produced is highly dependent on the individual, however out of all of the contexts (isolation, oestrus and feeding), oestrus is when the most cows are vocalising and when the most calls are produced,” Green explains.

“This suggests that oestrus is the most arousing time for the animals”.

According to Green, there has been research conducted in beef cattle breeds and other dairy breeds, but it is important to validate the Holstein-Friesian dairy cows which are the most common in Australian dairy systems.

In fact, the study of animal vocalisations is hardly new. Dallas-based Courtney Dunn was volunteering with a tiger sanctuary almost a decade ago when she started recording ‘tiger talk’ - or the different sounds tigers would make between each other and the sounds they made when she spoke to them.

Today, Dunn’s research into social vocalisation of tigers has been recognised worldwide and she is currently at the forefront of a movement to save the global tiger population.

Green says that dairy farmers are excited by her research and the prospect of understanding how content their cows really are.

“If we can map out the specific information in dairy cattle calls, farmers could tailor feeding and treatments to the cows’ needs based on what they are saying, and this will also give consumers peace of mind that the animals they are receiving their goods from are happy and healthy.”

Does this sound like moo-sic to your ears?