Dairy cows that have no access to outside pasture may have damaged emotional wellbeing, new research led by Queen’s University Belfast indicates. “Pasture access can promote natural behaviour [and] improve cows’ health, and cows, given the choice, spend most of their time outside. However, the effects of pasture access on dairy cows’ psychological wellbeing have been poorly understood – that is what our judgment bias study intended to measure,” he said. After learning this task, to test judgment bias, the researchers presented cows with other buckets in between the trained locations. “Britain and Ireland have mostly resisted the trend towards housing dairy cows indoors full-time,” he said.

Source: The Irish Times March 18, 2021 14:25 UTC