When you think about an intelligent animal, your first instinct is to probably think about elephants, dolphins, or dogs. But barn animals are often forgotten! Dairy cattle are overlooked and while it depends on the animal, as some are brighter than others, as a breed they are more intelligent than you might give them credit for! I can also vouch for the cows at Witter when I say that they each have their own unique, quirky personalities that make them all wonderfully different.
Another aspect of the farm that is fascinating is the psychological conditioning of the dairy cattle here. The conditioning I’m referring to is a concept called classical conditioning. A man named Pavlov discovered this learning process that happens when two stimuli are continuously paired: a response that is caused by the stimulus so many times that eventually the subject may exhibit signs of the response without the stimulus or before the first stimulus is completed. An example of this is after they come back in from a period of social interaction, many of the cows can walk straight to their stall without any instruction. As you can see from the images below, there are a lot of stalls so it is not the easiest task! Another demonstration of their conditioning is that when the mechanical milking units come out, many of the cows will let down their milk and it will start streaming out of their udder before we have even put the machine on them!
I’m so happy that I’ve been able to participate in this program, gotten to meet the friendly staff at Witter, and met so many adorable dairy cattle!