RESEARCHERS have found cows can be trained to respond to sound, with potential time saving benefits.
FutureDairy researcher Cameron Clark said while there was plenty of anecdotal evidence from farmers that cows could be called to the dairy, this study paved the way for farmers to use cow calling as a powerful management tool.
"It's given us the confidence for further research on the best way to train cows and to look at the potential to train individual cows to respond to their own unique sound," he said.
"It has potential application on farms with both conventional milking systems and robots.
"Dairy farmers can spend more than seven hours a week herding the cows up to the dairy for morning and evening milking sessions.
"The use of automatic gates and calling sounds could eliminate this daily task."
The 'cow calling' study was the first step in understanding how cows respond to sound.
To test the concept, student Alexandra Green designed a maze in a paddock using electric fencing, following similar principles that researchers use with studies of rats or mice in mazes.
"We used the Pavlov's dog principle to teach the cows to associate the sound with a feed reward," Ms Green said.
"Initially the cows guessed their way through the maze but they quickly started to turn their heads to where the sound was; they would really think about it."
Although this was a small, introductory trial, the FutureDairy team is keen to continue the investigations given such promising results. A
follow up study is underway with cows wearing a collar that generates a sound.
"Ultimately we hope we can develop a system where individual cows respond to their own sound by moving from the paddock to the robotic dairy for milking," she said.
