The provision of environmental enrichments, which allows for important and motivating behaviours to be performed, should be considered for both intensively managed and pasture-based cattle.
According to research conducted by the CSIRO's Emily Dickson in partnership with the University of New England, enrichment promotes positive welfare, which may have flow-on effects for milk production in dairy cows.
Environmental enrichment aims to increase the complexity of an animal's environment, allowing it to explore the range of behaviours it can perform.
Ms Dickson presented her findings at the Dairy Research Foundation Symposium in November.
She said improving animal welfare is at an all-time high.
"One example of this for dairy cattle is the use of grooming brushes. There are videos of these doing the rounds on social media, and the general public love these types of interactions - leaving comments such as 'it makes me feel happy' and 'happy cow milk tastes better'," Ms Dickson said.
Although the use of environmental enrichment is increasing in more intensively managed systems, research for enrichment in pasture-based systems needs to be improved, Ms Dickson said.
"This could be because it is generally considered that these animals are less behaviourally restricted," she said.
"However, not all pasture-based environments are created equally, and it is not uncommon to graze cattle on lush, green pastures that are otherwise devoid of features.
"These differing characteristics, for example, the presence of trees, potentially offer natural enrichment opportunities to livestock. In their absence, some behaviours may be prevented."
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To determine which enrichments and behaviours were significant to pasture-based cattle, Ms Dickson presented eight groups of seven animals with four enrichments simultaneously; this included a stump, post and rope, grooming brush and a woodchip pile.
She monitored how they used these enrichments during daylight hours for two days a week over a period of three weeks.
For all the objects, enrichment use peaked in the first week and then declined as they became more habituated over time.
"For the woodchip, and particularly for the brush, enrichment use was more maintained in the final week than the other two enrichments, which indicated these may be more preferred and valued by the cattle," she said.
"There were also peaks in enrichment use in the early morning and late afternoon period."
The woodchip pile accounted for more than 50 per cent of all the time spent interacting with the enrichments, but it had a lower frequency of use than the brush.
This was because most of these interactions were either standing or lying on the woodchip pile for extended periods, sometimes well over an hour, without getting off.
"Interestingly, when combined, grooming on the brush, the stump and even the post that the rope was attached to accounted for 36pc of all interactions," Ms Dickson said.
"This seems surprisingly high, as cows on pasture spend less than 1pc of their time grooming. However, these cattle spent, on average, 1 hour 20 minutes each day grooming on these objects, which accounts for about 2pc of their time budget.
"Although this still doesn't seem like a lot, we still saw twice the amount of grooming than we were expecting to see. This indicates this behaviour is important and maybe rewarding for cattle, which is not surprising because it helps with coat cleanliness, and studies have linked it to calming cattle."
Although this study was performed on beef cattle, Ms Dickson said it was still relevant to the dairy industry, but there are considerations when comparing the two.
"The cattle in these studies were only moved from their paddock once a week, so it isn't known how enrichment use might change when they are moved more regularly due to milking, especially if this occurs during those peak time periods of enrichment use," she said.
"It may also be possible to use strategically placed brushes at the exit to the milking shed. However, this leads to other questions, such as does this limited access provide enough of an opportunity to groom, does it increase competition, which can disadvantage more subordinate animals or does it impact the flow of exit from a shed."
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