How two dairies are using bovine pheromone to reduce stress

High-yielding herds milking through robots and running heifers as a separate milking group are now using a bovine pheromone to further reduce stress levels at first calving.

Despite already operating strategies to minimise trauma for new entrants to the herd, this additional help is making heifers visibly more relaxed after calving.

As a result, two herds are finding that heifers are learning the robot milking routine within two days and going on to hit peak yield faster.

See also: How to help heifers join the milking herd and reduce stress

Commonly used to settle nervous cats and dogs in the home, an appeasing pheromone has now been developed for beef and dairy cattle as a way to naturally calm them.

The product, FerAppease, has been tried by Devonshire dairy farmer Paul Symons for a year and he thinks the benefit may be eventually worth 1,000 litres of extra milk on a first lactation.

FerAppease is applied to the back of the neck and above the muzzle © FerAppease

Yield uplift

The heifers at Higher Henceford Farm – home of Standon Holsteins – near Crediton, have added 3 litres/day to their peak yield after having this pheromone applied at calving, says Paul.

The herd size ranges from 200 to 250 cows, depending on sales of genetics. Average yield stands at 11,500kg and heifers produce 10,500kg.

Yet when Paul switched from parlour milking to a system based around two second-hand robots, his separate heifer management group was mixed with mature cows, and he saw first-calver lactations plummet.

He discovered that cows were preventing heifers from entering the robots. Rather than outright physical bullying, their behaviour was more like intimidation, he says.

“What you would typically see was two or three cows waiting to be milked and a heifer would walk down the shed to be milked. She would then have a drink but go back to the cubicles.

There was a drop in yield of about 5-10 litres/day compared with the parlour, and we went from 9,500 litres in the parlour to less than 7,000 litres for heifers.”

Faster training

Consequently, Paul installed a third (new) robot and created a new heifer-only group of 64 animals, leaving the original two robots for mature cows.

This time, he found it was taking too long to train heifers to be milked, so his vet suggested that he trialled FerAppease to reduce stress after calving.

“We had a good response – they were trained in a couple of days, whereas before it was more like two weeks. But we weren’t sure if it was the pheromone, the new robot or the yard.

“Then our free trial of product ran out. There wasn’t a massive difference, it was just noticeable over a period of three weeks that heifers weren’t training in two days – it was more like four to five days.”

It was enough, however, to convince Paul to buy the pheromone and use it on heifers before calving.

Every Monday, he now applies 5ml on the back of the neck and 5ml in the middle of the forehead to all heifers in the pre-calving pen.

“They are getting to peak yield quicker – averaging 36kg/day – with a flatter lactation and more milk. The most vital point is that they are training [to the robot] early,” he says.

Calming effect

Similar success on calving heifers has prompted Stowell Farms’ herd manager, Chris Gowen, to try the pheromone on cows this autumn.

The 780-cow unit in Wiltshire also runs a separate first-lactation heifer group. The team calves 30-40 heifers a month and to train them all to the robot would take an hour a day.

Chris says that staff noticed how heifers were quieter, and more relaxed going to the robots without any kicking, having had FerAppease 21 days pre-calving on the head and muzzle, with another head application at calving.

“Within two days, heifers were taking themselves to the robot, whereas our average is five to seven days. I realised it really helped with stress,” says Chris.

He found that heifers were hitting peak yield earlier (at 38-42 days, rather than 50 days), and regaining body weight sooner post-calving (from 60 days instead of 70-75 days).

Chris wonders whether the ultimate result will be more heifers calving down for a second time, prolonging herd life.

Use in cows

These results prompted him to try the pheromone on cows as a method of “stress release”.

Chris dries off 15-20 cows every week and says the problem with a consistent, cow-driven routine in robot systems is that cows become stressed at drying off.

“Changing their whole routine – the cows can’t choose to eat concentrates two or three times a day and they leave the [milking] environment – is another stress,” he points out.

“It’s a challenging period for the cow in her calendar. If we try to sort transition at calving, it’s too late. We need to start helping them at drying off.”

Chris has three years’ records from the robots to be able to make comparisons about the effects of the pheromone, and is hopeful.

“It will be interesting to see if we gain 0.5 litre, or get a quicker return to bodyweight, or better intakes – it will be cost-effective. It adds so much to calmness and quietness, and ultimately improves dry matter intake.”