Could These TOILET-TRAINED COWS Be The Future Of Cattle Farming?
Livestock farming has a massive ecological footprint. Cattle farming, especially, not only contributes to global greenhouse gas emissions but also produces waste that contaminates soil and waterways.
To address this problem, a team of scientists at the Research Institute for Farm Animal Biology in Germany has conducted an experiment where they train young calves to urinate and defecate in assigned areas. Their aim? To reduce harmful waste runoff and soil acidification.
The ‘MooLoo’ approach, as they call it, involves rewarding calves with treats when they were successful and discouraging them with short, mild blasts of water when they don’t relieve themselves at the designated “loo”. A few weeks and 15 training sessions later, 11 out of 16 calves had been toilet-trained! This sounds promising, but what do you think of the experiment? Let us know below!