Love Animals - Cows With Names Produce More Milk

Here's something about cows - the dairy cows, who have been used by their owners for squeezing milk. According to the farmer, the lactating cow owned by him is expected to yield as much milk as he can squeeze out of her. It's one kind pressure that the cows have been facing since time immemorial all over the world. Report of a study published in the journal Anthrozoos talked about a gentle way to get more milk. Love can win everything on the Earth! Gently patting her with love, asking about her day, calling her 'Lady Elsa' or 'Mama Rose', rubbing her throat, and making her feel how much you love her are some full proved tricks to get more milk. Researches have shown that cows treated with love and having a good name are more productive than those without names. The cattle behaviorist Catherine Douglas, of Newcastle University, UK says, that it's the name and the way you treat her and call her that make a dairy cow feel more secured, relaxed and loved! Catherine Douglas, who first identified the consequences of stress in dairy cows, said: "If you call a cow by name, it indicates that perhaps you talk to her more, perhaps you consider her more of an individual, perhaps you have more of a one-to-one relationship". Douglas added, "personally, I have had a black eye and broken ribs from milking", because anxious cows are more likely to stomp and kick, making milking really difficult than when the cow is in stress. Study on the consequences of stress in cows showed that the rise in stress hormones like cortisol interferes milk-boosting hormone oxytocin, thereby affecting the milk production.

In their study Douglas and colleague Peter Rowlinson investigated how a cow's relationship with her master affects her productivity. The researchers surveyed over 500 dairy owners across UK through questionnaires about how they treated their cows and what they thought of their cows. The study showed that cows with names yielded an average of 258 more liters of milk over 10-month milking season, which comes up to around 1 ltrs extra production a day, as compared to those who are nameless.

The results of the study is something that many of you already know, but I'm sure many others didn't know this. Anxious chickens lay fewer eggs as compared to those loved ones, fearful dogs grow slow, because they eat less. Ian Duncan, the Chair in Animal Welfare at the University of Guelph in Ontario Said: "It seems natural to me that you would get these sorts of findings...it just adds to what we already know". He told the Discovery News, "I think in the future we will see food items, including eggs, milk, and meat, with labels that guarantee these animals had a certain quality of life... it's something we're working on."