Is it possible to train a cow

The water doesn't harm the calves, but just as with Socks the cat at home, it annoys them. The training spread over 15 days, and most of the calves learned within 20 to 25 urinations. The report says that compares favorably with toilet-training time for 3- and 4-year-old children. Study co-author Lindsay Matthews told ABC the team only trained cows to use the MooLoo for urinating, not defecating, saying urine is a bigger problem. But Matthews predicted they could use the same techniques to teach calves to go No.

Maybe a PooMooLoo will be next. Next, the team placed the calves in a 2-metre-long alley next to the latrine, which had a gate that the animals could push open in order to enter the latrine. When the heifers urinated inside the latrine, they received the tasty treat, but if a calf urinated in the alley, the team activated a water sprinkler that sprayed it for 3 seconds — an experience thought to be unpleasant for the animals.

In the final step, the team opened up the alleyway to form a wider enclosed space for the cows to move around within. Langbein said a future ambition would be to teach cows to also defecate in a toilet area. The team are now working to create an automated system that could be used to train calves with almost no intervention from farmers.

Agriculture is the largest source of ammonia emissions, with livestock farming making up more than half of that contribution. This article is more than 1 month old. Antibiotics and feed additives should be mixed in the milk or concentrate to improve the growth rate. Training of calf for pail feeding. Weaned calves should be trained to drink milk from pails so that feeding management is easier.

Generally crossbred calves learn quickly to drink milk from pail or nipple. But it is little difficult to train buffalo calves. Buffalo calves and lazy and slow in learning to drink milk or milk replacer from the pail or bucket. Training of buffalo calves required patience and efforts.

The scheduled quantity of boiled and cooled milk poured in the milk pail and should be moved to the calf.

Care should be taken to avoid frightening. The calves should not be forced to drink milk by immersing the head in to the bail. Frightened calves may refuse to come close to the pail. The attendant should first dip his two fingers index and middle fingers in to the milk after cleaning and kept close to the mouth of calf.

After tasting the milk calf will start suckle the fingers. Gradually the fingers should be lowered to the bail and should be dipped in to the milk. When the calf takes one or two mouthfulls of milk remove the fingers. This process may be repeated whenever the calf stops drinking and lifts its head.

Feeding management of calf. Reticulo-rumen is non functional in calves and hence feeding of calves should be treated as non-ruminant and they are not equipped to utilize cellulose. The calves cannot utilize roughages containing higher amount of cellulose. To encourage the early development of rumen and reticulum the calves should be fed with good quality leguminous hay and other roughages. Because of non availability of good quality protein due to lack of ruminal microbial digestion.

The calves have little capacity to utilize non-protein nitrogenous coumpo0unds and therefore substance like urea should not be included in their ration. Due to the same reason, B-complex vitamins also are dietary essential for calves in addition to vitamin A and D. For digestion of milk and enzymatic digestion in the abomasums and small intestine is more important that bacterial fermentation in the rumen, which is more wasteful.

To avoid this oesophageal groove exist in the reticulum connecting the oesophagus with the omasum. During nursing and milk feeding, the sides of the groove are raised by reflex action to form a tunnel through which milk passes from oesophagus to omasum by-passing the rumen and reticulum. This continues to function even after considerable development of the rumen if milk feeding is continued. Most of the draught breeds produce milk just sufficient to meet the requirement of calves and calves are allowed to suckle form the mother.

But in case of crossbred cows which produce more milk than the requirement of calf, to regulate the milk production and also to avoid over feeding of calves leaving one or two teats for calf while milk out the other is practiced.

In nurse- cow method 3 or 4 calves are allowed to suckle one nurse cow. To avoid calf rejection the mucous at the time of calving is applied to all the calves to be adopted by the nurse cow and placed before her to lick and dry. This will help to avoid rejection of calf.

The number of calves to be allotted depends on the production level of nurse cow. Use of nurse- cow is an easy alternate way of raising calves and required least managemental skills. Early weaning and whole milk feeding. This method calves are weaned at birth and trained to drink milk from nipple or pail. The calves should be weighed every week and the quantity of milk to be fed is calculated accordingly. Recommended feeding schedule- I According to age of the calf If the farmers are not able to weigh the calves as per schedule, calves can also be fed according to its birth weight.

Recommended feeding schedule- II According to its body weight The general guide line is 8, 9, 10, 8 and 5 per cent of the birth weight during 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5t week respectively.