The Moos Room™

00;00;11;03 - 00;00;33;08
Brad
And welcome to The Moos Room. Just Brad doing a solo episode today. Well, we sort of had some issues. Emily and I had recorded a podcast on the Cow of the future, but for some reason, her microphone was acting up and it went dead halfway through the podcast. So I guess we'll have to record that one again next week.

00;00;33;08 - 00;01;01;00
Brad
So stay tuned for cow of the future and what that all might look like. But today I wanted to give a kind of an update on some research that we actually did here. One of my colleagues, Rielle two, presented this at the International Precision Dairy Farming Conference in New Zealand in December. So it's kind of hot off the press that involves research here with our cows at the research center.

00;01;01;00 - 00;01;33;20
Brad
And Maurice was actually looking at circadian rhythms of cows, which is kind of interesting really. It's looked at the impact of their animal welfare and using precision technology to kind of figure that out. Well, let's dive in. What are circadian rhythms? Well, circadian rhythms, they regulate biological function in dairy cows. So what does that big science mean? Well, if you have feeding you have activity.

00;01;33;22 - 00;02;07;23
Brad
You have rest periods, hormone cycles, immune responses. When all of these rhythms are aligned with environmental cues, they support natural behaviors. They reduce stress in cows and they improve resiliency. And resiliency is one of the things that we we certainly like to talk about as well. So strong cows lasting a long time, no health problems. So it really a lot of the modern management practices that we see on dairy farms today can disrupt these circadian rhythms.

00;02;07;24 - 00;02;32;27
Brad
If one of those is irregular lighting. So barn lights, dark time periods, even environmental conditions that we have at least up here in the north where it goes dark at 430 at night and stays dark until almost 8:00 in the morning feeding times. So not being consistent with feeding times and a lot of confinement conditions can interrupt circadian rhythms.

00;02;32;28 - 00;03;13;28
Brad
Well, what are the consequences of disrupting these rhythms in cows? You might have metabolic imbalance immune suppression. So cows are not as healthy as what they seem to be. Behavioral changes. You get lots of health problems lameness, mastitis, reduced fertility. So all of these things can combine if we don't sort of have good rhythms in our cows. So really the motivation for this study and we all work together really myself, Isaac Sulfur and an undergraduate student here at the University of Minnesota.

00;03;14;00 - 00;03;46;03
Brad
We all work together to sort of find whether these seasonal behavior patterns, which can be tracked by precision technology, do they kind of signal well for outcomes in cows? So there's many daily and seasonal rhythms in dairy cows. They can really display clear biological rhythms in feeding activity, just activity all over rest and body temperature. And these rhythms are certainly shaped by a lot of environmental cues.

00;03;46;06 - 00;04;14;01
Brad
You know, light, dark cycles like we had talked before, feeding schedules just daily routines. We know that cows are very into routines. They're they like rhythm. And when these rhythms function properly, all of these behavioral rhythms, they support high milk production, immune stability, metabolic efficiency. We find that most of these behaviors peak during the day and they decline at night.

00;04;14;04 - 00;04;53;11
Brad
And that certainly reflects strong diurnal or day or night alignment with internal clocks. You know, we humans we have internal clocks as well. Dairy cows, yes, they do as well. But if we think about seasonal behavioral shifts and monitoring tools, so disruptions from stress or mismanagement can lead to oxidative stress, immune suppression, impaired tissue function. So these changes in these stress patterns have been linked to lameness disease signs of discomfort or stress.

00;04;53;18 - 00;05;21;11
Brad
So really what we're talking about is really improving the health functionality of these cows by looking at their circadian rhythms and these precision technologies that we've talked about. And we'll probably keep talking about those as well. They record minute to minute by shifts in rumination, activity and rest. We're continually monitoring these cows, and really early detection of welfare concerns.

00;05;21;11 - 00;05;49;22
Brad
And abnormal behavior timing. We can really look at what is going on in these cows. So really, I think our thought was, can we use these seasonal rhythm insights to improve welfare in our cows? So we looked at the sensor systems here at our research center and our cows. So grazing based dairy herd in the summertime, confinement in the winter.

00;05;49;23 - 00;06;12;11
Brad
We actually just looked at one of the sensor systems that we have. We just looked at the cow manager data. You know, we have multiple sensors here. But that's the system that we used. We had well over ten years worth of data on these cows. So we've been monitoring these cows for a long, long time. And we're very fortunate to have a lot of this data that we've just archived and kept.

00;06;12;11 - 00;06;40;18
Brad
So our goal was to see if these behaviors follow predictable season or time patterns in the sensor data. We wanted to look at the different breeds. So we have Holsteins crossbred. We even looked at a 1964 Holstein group that we had here. We still had a lot of behavioral data on those. And really looking at long term behavioral changes to see if they maybe signal some shifts in welfare.

00;06;40;21 - 00;07;08;03
Brad
So like I said, we looked at our data from our university herd here. We had almost 1500 cows and Holsteins. Pro cross, which was Holstein might be the Viking Red might graze cross cows which are Jersey, Normandy and Viking Red. And then our 1964 Holstein genetics. And we looked at the data across hours of the day, several months.

00;07;08;05 - 00;07;35;28
Brad
And we looked at rumination, eating behavior, not active behavior or rest or active behavior and high activity. So we wanted to express the behaviors as a percent of their total activity during the day. It's kind of what these sensor systems do. And we looked at different sire groups, and we did an analysis that looked at the percent activity counts by behavior in breed.

00;07;36;01 - 00;08;02;01
Brad
And then we measured how strong the seasonal patterns were in amplitude. And when the behavior peaked during the year. So that's kind of timing. So what did we find in this study? Well, if we think about it from a eating time, we'll we'll look at eating time first. There's a clear seasonal rhythm in all of the breeds. So they peak during mid-summer time.

00;08;02;01 - 00;08;37;13
Brad
So June and July which is consistent with the higher summer feed intake. So some of it is grazing cows consuming more fresh cows from March, April and May, consuming higher feed intake. We also found breed differences. So the graze cross cows spent the most time eating about 25% of the day, and they had the strongest rhythm. So the highest amplitude are 1964 control Holsteins spent the least amount of time eating just because they're probably a smaller cow.

00;08;37;16 - 00;08;59;18
Brad
Less efficient. They don't need to consume as much. And the Procrustes and the Holstein cows were intermediate to what about rumination? So the highest rumination was in our Procrustes crossbred. So might be the art Holstein Viking Red, as well as our graze cross cows. So all crossbred cows had the highest rumination. And maybe that signals something to do with efficiency in the room.

00;08;59;20 - 00;09;28;21
Brad
The lowest rumination time was in Holstein cows. About 29% of their day was ruminating. Peak rumination occurred in the winter time. So it's kind of the inverse of the eating trend. So cows are ruminating more in the winter time than in the summertime. And our graze cross cows had the strongest seasonal rhythm. Their amplitude was about 1.5%. The Holsteins and the crossbred cows, which are very similar, similar in body size, similar in feed intake.

00;09;28;24 - 00;09;57;10
Brad
Procrustes maybe a little bit more in milk production than the Holstein cows, but they showed flatter rhythms, so their rumination time across the months was was flatter than what we saw in the Graze Cross or the 1964 Holstein. So here, basically, cows just don't eat and chew at random. Their eating behavior and rumination behavior really follows a seasonal rhythm, much like our energy patterns across the year.

00;09;57;11 - 00;10;22;00
Brad
Certainly what's exciting is these rhythms differ by breed. As an example, the Grace cross cows not only eat more, but also showed the strongest seasonal patterns, which meant their behavior was more in sync with their natural environment. And that could be a sign of better adaptability and potentially better welfare under pasture based systems. That's really what we developed.

00;10;22;00 - 00;11;00;16
Brad
That group for Normandy, Jersey Viking Red was more for a pasture based system. So what about activity levels? Let's talk about that. So we look at overall activity just general activity. Our 1964 Holstein cows were the most active. About 9% of the day peaked in early July. Graze cross cows were the least active amplitudes were the lowest for the control cows, medium for the graze cross and the Holstein in the Procrustes were lower, and this suggested that the control cows 1964 cows had stronger seasonal shifts in their activity patterns.

00;11;00;17 - 00;11;27;10
Brad
What about high activity? So normally we think about high activity is related to heat detection, at least in the sensor systems. So Holsteins had the highest high activity time about 16%. And it peaked in mid April and had the largest amplitude then 4.8 to Holsteins 1964. And the gray cross had lower high activity means but still strong rhythms.

00;11;27;12 - 00;11;59;03
Brad
The Procrustes had the smallest amplitude, more stable across time, not active, so they're not active. Behavior 1964 Holsteins were the most inactive about 30% of their day, so they weren't eating, they weren't ruminating, weren't walking around, especially in the wintertime. So these cows were really probably the most inefficient. And we've seen that time and time again. The other breeds were closer to about 25% as far as not active.

00;11;59;03 - 00;12;22;03
Brad
In 1964, cows had the largest amplitude, which meant more seasonal changes for those cows. And really, all breeds peaked in inactivity in the wintertime, which kind of matches their rumination time. Nobody wants to be active during the winter, at least up here in Minnesota. I don't want to be. It is cold outside. So what does this activity mean across time?

00;12;22;03 - 00;12;54;11
Brad
Well, all activity showed strong circ annual rhythms, so lots of rhythm across the time. Kind of waves and peaks. In 1964 cows had the most pronounced seasonal swings graze cross cows had lower activity but more stable behavior. The Holstein cows had the highest high activity behavior, but was flatter in rhythm across overall activity. So kind of to drive at home, just like people can be.

00;12;54;14 - 00;13;33;12
Brad
Early birds, night owls, cows show differences in how active they are and these patterns change across the year. We see that some breeds, like our 1964 Holstein cows, had really strong seasonal swings in their activity and rest well. Others, like the Pro Cross cows, were more stable. This tells us that breed influences how sensitive cows are to changes in season and environment, and that sensitivity might help or hurt them, depending on how well farm management supports these natural rhythms.

00;13;33;12 - 00;13;54;16
Brad
So kind of what do we see. So the seasonal behavioral patterns certainly varied by breed and they appear closely linked to welfare. The breed differences suggested that some of the cows were more in sync to these environmental cues. So these graze cross cows may be more adapted to pasture based systems. And that's really what they were developed for.

00;13;54;18 - 00;14;14;22
Brad
So it's good to see that that's results are coming out. So they're seasonal behavioral rhythms and maybe they can be linked to health risks like mastitis lameness and stress. And we didn't look at any of the health risks that these cows have. Maybe that's future study what we'll be looking. Can we link these rhythms to health problems, things like that.

00;14;14;22 - 00;14;38;05
Brad
We certainly have the data to be able to do that. And we certainly will be able to to think about that. So where does our future work go? Well, like I said, we've tried to link this behavioral data to health and productivity for some maybe stronger validation, really exploring how all of these breeds might respond to different lighting, feeding schedules, things like that.

00;14;38;05 - 00;14;59;17
Brad
I don't think we we really think about behavior in a lot of the things that we do, and certainly we want to test whether these management ideas goes along with seasonal behavioral patterns and can we improve these outcomes. So kind of in conclusion, to kind of wrap this up, we found that seasonal behavioral patterns reveal meaningful insights into cow welfare.

00;14;59;17 - 00;15;26;21
Brad
So these really these patterns offer maybe some noninvasive indicators of potential issues that we see in dairy production systems. Definitely breed and season influence behavior. We know that it influences us, even as humans that graze cross cows had stronger seasonal patterns, possibly which may be better suited to their grazing environment. And really, this real time behavior tracking can support proactive welfare management.

00;15;26;21 - 00;15;53;10
Brad
So helping to detect and respond to problems really before clinical signs appear, I think we're just off the cusp of trying to figure out what to do with this sensor data. There's so much sensor data out there, and maybe looking at some of these behavioral aspects will be really important into the future. Well, I hope you learned a little bit about our behavioral studies that we did that was presented at the New Zealand Conference about a month ago.

00;15;53;11 - 00;16;18;17
Brad
And they'll really think about using these sensor systems and how they relate to behavior in the future. And so with that, if you have any comments, questions or scathing rebuttals, feel free to contact me at the newsroom. That's m o s r o m at under edu or find us on the web University of Minnesota Livestock Extension or and Rock Dairy on Instagram.

00;16;18;19 - 00;16;21;11
Brad
With that. I hope you have a great day. Eat.