The sensory world of cattle

Cattle have little color sensitivity , like all mammals except the primates, which is the order we humans most closely resemble. It has recently been discovered cattle have some ability to distinguish shades of blue and green. They are sensitive to light and dark in their visual field, somewhat like seeing a black and white photo with just a little color sensitivity to blue and green. They have the ability to see things all 360 degrees around themselves without turning their head, and a cow or steer which is blind in one eye can see a little in front and somewhat more behind without turning its head. They really miss seeing the blind side, and it makes them “spookey,” and hard to handle unless they follow other cattle. Cattle have no idea that you can not see behind yourself.

They have little depth perception, the ability to estimate distance by the difference in images in the two eyes, like we do. Instead they use visual clues, primarily size of recognized objects and objects passing in front of or behind other objects of known distance. Size changes as something moves closer or away in the visual image also give cattle clues to distance.

They see much better than we do when it is twilight or dark, because they have a special reflective layer in the back of their eyes, called the tapetum. This is why car lights shining on them in the dark sometimes make their eyes look like reflectors. Remember, after dark they can see a lot better than you can! If you try to handle them after it begins to get dark a flashlight blinds them, so try to get along with your own night vision.

Their eyes focus well on the grass at the end of their nose and objects over twenty five or thirty feet away, but not as well in between. But they do well enough to aim a butt or kick at a person!
Cattle are exquisitely sensitive to motion, particularly quick changes. They can see you move through gaps in board fences, and if they are inside a roofed area and you are against the light it may excite them. Young ones especially seem not to notice the fence keeps you out, as well as them in.

Bovines are actually quite uncoordinated, compared to a person. They may get their head caught between two trees and never think to move their head up to get out. They can’t place their feet to step on high places or rocks, or to avoid them, especially the back feet. Some animals do well at this, but not cattle. In a cattle chute they kick and flail around without much idea of where their feet are going. You have to protect them from places where feet and lower legs might be caught or injured. They get caught in wire from fences and flail without an effective plan to get out, just instinct.

Cattle have keen hearing, you will usually not be able to sneak up on them, even if you are out of sight, because they hear so well. They are responsive to loud noises both up close and far away, and to very slight noises when the sound is unusual. Their sense of smell is excellent, far better than yours, and their sense of taste can be presumed to be excellent, at least in the area of food materials, since they depend on picking out the best food in the pasture, day by day, bite by bite, for their welfare. Observation shows they can doubtless taste the effects of the lime and fertilizer you use, also the effect of manure and urine dropped on the pasture in the last several months, avoiding it at first and later relishing the effect it has on the grass. This delay no doubt helps avoid parasitic worm larva until the larva die.

They prefer to eat leaf tips of grass, in contrast to the lower parts left after the first bite. At least part of the reason strip grazing works is that hungry animals eat the whole plant, rather than moving on to another especially succulent bite on the top of another tuft of grass, stepping on several plants between.
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Cattle are more active physically and sexually at dawn and dusk. They like to rest in the middle of the day, and sleep about 4 hours at night, in a series of naps. It’s best not to disturb them after they have gotten settled for the night, though. They get excited and are difficult to control if you do.

Cattle are most comfortable at 30 to 50 degrees. They have difficulty getting rid of heat when it is hot, since they do not sweat. They loose heat through breathing, like dogs do, but are not able to pant effectively. A person in good physical condition used to sweating can stand physical activity above 80 or 85 much better than cattle can. One athletic man or a small group of men in good shape can just about run a bunch of cows to death at high temperature.

Tests in California showed that keeping dairy cows heads air conditioned was quite effective in reducing body temperature. Cattle need shade in hot weather, as well as plenty of water to evaporate as they breathe, as evaporation is the basis of getting rid of heat generated by metabolism.

Mother cows do not recognize their new calf by sight, but rather by smell. This knowledge is important if you want to give a cow a calf other than her own (because her calf has died, for example). Some will take the calf, and some won’t. Getting the smell of the cow’s own calf on the new calf helps. Confine them together until the cow allows the calf to nurse. A time or two feeding will usually “bond” them.


The Group Behavior of cattle

A cow keeps track of her new calf by “keeping an eye on it” for several days. If this connection is broken not long after the calf is born (moving the herd to another field, or to the barn) the cow will have a much harder time getting connected with the right calf. If the calf is wild it will run away from its dam. The cow remembers where she was separated from the calf, and will try to go back to that spot. The several days old calf will try to return to the spot where they were separated too, but not a very young calf. Heifers especially will abandon a calf if they are separated from it. You don’t want to separate them, even for a short time right after the calf is born. Eventually the pair seems able to identify the each other visually, perhaps by the way each acts as much as shape. Perhaps also by voice when they call.

Cattle watch each other. The herd generally spreads all over the area available to them in a field. They are in contact by their calls and by watching movement of other animals. They sometimes call others to something that can be eaten, but more often they do not, as though they want to enjoy it by themselves as long as possible. Soon other cows, even out of sight, notice that part of the field is vacant, or other cows are drifting away in a certain direction, and follow them. If cows are huddled together something is wrong, perhaps a predator is in the field. This may be called the drift principle – when they see another animal moving, they tend to move the same way.

The bull is attracted to a cow in heat (ready to breed) by smell. The cow produces a chemical called a pheromone, which the bull smells, not with his regular smelling organ, but with a special smell organ called the vomeronasal organ. He will wrinkle his nose in a characteristic way when using this organ. He may insert his nose in the cows urine as she urinates when she is in heat. The pheromone - vomeronasal organ combination is quite powerful, and a cow in heat may be detected a mile or more away if the wind is right. The bull advertises his presence by a particular “trumpeting” sound, which is easy for the cow (and you) to recognize, a sound which carries great distances.

You can learn several of the characteristic sounds cattle make. In addition to the trumpeting call just mentioned, some of the most familiar are: 1. A cow calling her calf, which changes with her degree of distress. 2. A calf calling its mother. They sometimes appear to be too lazy to walk to each other at meal time (especially when the calf gets older, they seem to call one to the other “Come to me!). 3. A calf that is frightened and calls for help. The cows will come from all directions when they hear this distress call, look out for yourself. 4. A call that is effectively “Report in, I want to know where you out of sight bovines are.” 5. The characteristic sounds cows and bulls make when they warn you not to come too close (this is in the field, they don’t do it as much when confined, they use “body language” in a pen). 6. Infrequently, a sound indicating pain. They seldom make a sound at normal birth. 7. The challenge of one bull to another.

Cattle remember where they have gone. They find their way back by retracing their path. They remember places, but can not be hurried too much. Their analytical ability for the “floor plan” of the area around them is terrible. You observe they can not find their way to feed instantly if they have to walk around a fence to a gate even a short distance away. Sometimes it seems they are just being obstinate, but I am convinced they do not understand these situations. In nature there are few barriers of this sort. They eventually find their way by milling about in a random way, and following the animal which is moving. This is much more effective when they are not under stress. They will also follow you if they think it will lead to food. This is often more effective than to try to drive them.

The desire to be with other animals is very strong. This herd instinct makes it much easier to move them. In contrast, pigs scatter and are almost impossible to drive. If a bovine animal doesn’t stay with the herd, it may be sick or injured, or getting ready to have a calf. Staying away from the herd habitually often goes with an aggressive nature, including toward people.

The herd has a “pecking order,” one animal can boss all the others. This may not be very conspicuous to a casual observer, but it’s there. A second animal will be able to boss all but the top animal. A third all but the top two, and so on down to the bottom animal, which is bossed by all. Much of the pushing and fighting you observe between animals is an attempt to change this order, or to maintain it. Top animals are not threatened by lower animals, so they will not fight unless the lower animal becomes “uppity.” You may not know the order, but the animals do. It’s particularly conspicuous when you have several bulls together. Be careful about trying to separate bulls for their own protection. They are quite serious and very likely to challenge you under these circumstances.


Avoidance circle and handling animals

Every bovine animal has an area around itself, roughly circular in shape, which makes the animal uncomfortable if you enter. The term for this is the avoidance circle. The animal will try to move away from someone who intrudes into this area regardless of whether it is a man, dog or predator.

This circle is not always the same size. The more excited the animal, the larger the circle. The further the intrusion into the circle, the greater the effort by the animal to get away. So the closer you get to the animal, the less control you have over its direction. In other words, if you want maximum control to encourage the animal or group of animals to move in a certain direction, approach from the opposite direction, moving slowly, speaking in a quiet voice, or waving your arm. Get it to move before it is frightened. In the field, it is quite foolish to frighten the animals and encourage them to run. Obviously, cattle can run much faster than you can.

If an individual or group of bovines is going the way you want, follow quietly at a speed that will not alarm it. Yell only when it is doing the wrong thing, such as turning the wrong way. If it is running into a fence you can yell even from the side or somewhat behind to call attention the fence. Although cattle can run faster than you, thier comfortable walk may be somewhat slower than a vigorous walk by a man or boy.

When threatened, a group of animals move closer together. They become excited as a group, with some animals more excited than others. At low levels of excitement an older animal, a dominant cow, will move out first. This is your best option for moving the herd, because the old cow will not run and she is the natural leader. If she is familiar with the field, having made the trip several times before, she will know the way you want her to go. And she will please you or displease you as she sees fit, but she will be relatively easy to handle. If the group becomes more excited, the leader will be a young cow or heifer, or worse yet, a large calf. The younger the animal the more likely it is to try to break away from the herd, and this usually leads the whole herd the wrong way.

The people herding cattle form a line behind the animals and keep in line, close enough together to prevent an animal from trying to run between them. If you look down from above the herders should be like beads on a string, but somewhat separated. No one should be much ahead or behind this line, which may move more at one end than the other, stretching out into corners, dividing to go around obstructions like steep valleys and ponds. Cattle will let you come only so close before moving, and they have greater impulse to move if you crowd close to them. Animals that are not used to seeing several people in the field are much more likely to get excited.

The shape of the area where you want to move them, and the features of the field, such as slopes and valleys are very important. Gates should not be in the middle of the side of a field where you must drive animals. If they are, you have to have one group drive the animals to the gate, and another to prevent them from going past the gate. A better location for a gate is near the corner. The best arrangement to drive them into the handling pen is to start into a V broad at the end away from the chute, narrowing down to the handling pens. The fence may be made stronger as you approach the handling pens.

We had a lot of trouble in one of our fields with the cattle running up hill and circling around the field when we wanted them to go into a corner. We set up a temporary fence using polywire and fiberglass posts to funnel them into the corner, and it worked quite well.

Cattle weigh as much as a man, even at a few months of age. A strong man can manhandle them unless they are very aggressive up to about 300 pounds. Beyond that your strength is no match for theirs and they have four wheel drive. They are not likely to gang up on you, with several attacking at once, that has been breed out of them, but one may. Over 300 pounds you have nothing but psychology of one sort or another to handle them. You can inflict pain, you can frighten them even more, but your options are limited. Well thought out and built handling facilities are the best assistance to handling them. It is necessary to perform some operations that hurt the animal, at least as much as having an ear pierced or getting a shot, so they must be forced. They learn what is coming. Very simple facilities can be used for a small number of animals, or portable chutes used by a group of cattle owners.

Individual cattle vary considerably in their temperament. Temperament is hereditary, and can constitute a very serious problem. The attempts to quantify it have not been very successful, but it is a trait easily recognized by persons handling cattle. The attempts to quantify it have involved “time out of chute” (how quick they leave the chute) measurements and subjective judgments, known as “agitation scores,” but none has proved satisfactory for general use.

Wild cattle are “loosers.” Trials have shown they take a month or more to adjust when weaning, loosing weight when they should be gaining. They drift a lot when shipped, they have a disproportionate number of “dark cutters,” and they pass these traits on to their offspring. The Limousine breed established an EPD (expected progeny difference) for “docility” in the 1990’s, because it had such serious problems previously. The only way to handle these wild cattle is to ship them, as soon as possible, preferably as calves. They can seriously injure or kill someone and no animal is worth that.


As published in the WEST VIRGINIA CATTLEMAN