Testing the cattle fear factor
DUTCH researcher Kees van Reenen says different dairy cows have different temperaments and “temperament could be bred as a selective trait to improve robustness and wellbeing”.
This will come as no surprise to farmers but in the course of his research for a late PhD, Van Reenen did discover something which might be worth passing on.
He measured fear through behaviour and tests for cortisol in the blood and then tried an anti-anxiety drug, Brotizolam, to see what difference it made.
He concluded that persistent lowing was not a particularly good fear indicator.
See http://tinyurl.com/754nf9b for the Groningen University summary of the research.