Monitoring Cattle For Signs of Stress is Critical to Successful Dairy Farming

Of the five senses that livestock possesses, vision is the most leading sense along with hearing and sense of smell that let them evaluate their environment. Since the livestock is a prey class, they have an inbuilt characteristic to fear and avoid the unaccustomed sight, smell, object, sudden noise, and movement. The least stressed livestock is; the better performance it shows for the purpose reared either at a commercial production level or in a small-scale facility.


To reduce livestock handling stress, it is mandatory to understand the psychology of an individual herd and create an ambient environment for higher productivity. The livestock which experience repeatedly humanly contact by the handlers feels less stressed than the livestock which gets adverse treatment. All the training and restraining devices can slowly introduce to the Livestock without the fear of causing pain or hurting them. The breeding and milking animals need more care in terms of their feeding patterns and reactions to the handlers.

Due to widespread angle vision, the livestock could easily be frightened by moving objects or shadows when they are out of chutes. Limiting their wide-angle vision could reduce stress. While working on reducing livestock vision, it is desirable to reduce this angle from 300 degrees in cattle and 191-306 degrees in goats and sheep.

Similarly, noise can also distort livestock, where their handling becomes very difficult in some cases. The animal may injure itself or the handlers when it frightens due to any reason. Another dominating factor is to avoid strangers on the farm or in the premises where livestock is kept. Even if a veterinarian needs a detailed inspection of the herd or an individual diseased animal, real-time livestock monitoring arrangements could probably help to identify such animals followed by the individual physical inspection by separating it from the herds.

Otherwise, grazing livestock could show fewer behavioral changes than in a managed housing system. The Cattle farms and restricted houses often intensify cattle populations where they can't behave normally for longer. These animals could speedily modify their feeding behavior and become more aggressive towards the handlers.

Overall, livestock rearing and production success lie in knowing their psychology and handling them calmly according to their will. It needs careful study, and modern-day equipment could help the caretakers to monitor the herd behavior while sitting remotely.