Page 278 - The Welfare of Cattle

ethICaL IMPeratIVe of TELOS 255

and open or dry lots with or without shed or barn access (7.3%; USDA, 2016a). In general, pasture
access falls as herd size increases. What this means in practice is that the majority of both lactating
and dry cows do not receive regular pasture access in the United States.

Dairy Cattle housing Definitions
dry lot open dirt lot with no vegetative cover used for housing cows in arid
climates; common in California and american southwest.
freestall housing consisting of resting cubicles or “beds” in which dairy cows are
free to enter and leave at will.
Pasture area with vegetation suitable for grazing.
stanchion housing in which a cow is restrained to a particular stall in a device with
two rails that close around the cow’s neck after she enters the stall.
Cows are not able to enter and leave the stalls at will.
tie stall housing in which a cow is restrained to a particular stall by a neck collar
attached to the stall by a chain. Cows are not able to enter and leave the
stalls at will.
Source: reproduced from usda (2016a).

Of course, from a scientific perspective, high animal welfare can be achieved in housing
systems that do not provide access to the outdoors, and it is not the intent of this chapter to suggest
otherwise. However, the lack of outdoor and pasture access for the majority of US dairy cattle
may lead to ethical concerns over cattle being able to fulfill their telos among large portions of the
public; it may also pose some welfare challenges if cattle are denied the opportunity to engage in
motivated behaviors. As summarized by Charlton and Rutter (2017), “for cattle, pasture is a natural
environment, allowing them to express normal behaviors. It can provide ample comfortable lying
space, allowing cows to lie in stretched positions…” To reflect on the natural ethogram of the
cow is to acknowledge that, left to her own devices, a cow would opt to spend most of her day
engaging in grazing and ruminating behaviors (Hall, 2002). Cattle housed on pasture spend their
time engaged in up to 40 different categories of behavior (see Kilgour, 2012 for the ethogram of
behaviors exhibited by cattle on pasture). Of these ~40 behaviors, a substantial number, includ-
ing grazing (the most frequently-expressed behavior, at anywhere between 8 and 12 hours of the
24-hour cycle), are much more easily expressed in an open or grassy environment than they can be
in most indoor types of housing.
Providing cattle with the opportunity to access pasture also appears to provide a number of
health benefits. Decades of research indicate that pasture access can positively impact cow health,
for example, through reduction of lameness (Leaver, 1988; Smits et al., 1992; Gitau et al., 1996;
Hernandez-Mendo et al., 2007) and mastitis (see Charlton and Rutter [2017] for a brief review). While
some studies suggest that pasture housing may come with a production cost (Fontaneli et al., 2005;
Hernandez-Mendo et al., 2007), others have demonstrated that it is possible to graze cattle on
pasture with minimal to no production losses (e.g., in feed intake and milk yield, Chapinal et al.,
2010; Motupalli et al., 2014).
Looking to some of the research techniques used in animal welfare science may help further
resolve sticky questions about telos and dairy farming by providing more information about the
cow’s basic behavioral needs. For example, preference and motivation tests help scientists under-
stand the relative importance of different resources and environments to the cow, by quite literally
allowing her to vote with her feet. Cattle appear to be highly motivated (i.e., willing to work) to gain
access to pasture, but both preference and motivation for pasture depend on a number of factors,
including the individual, time of day, temperature, and location of feed (Legrand et al., 2009; Falk
et al., 2012; Charlton et al., 2013; Charlton and Rutter, 2017). For example, when given the choice
between pasture or indoors, dairy cows tend to spend their time inside the barn (where it is cooler
and feed is freely available) during the daytime before moving onto pasture at night (at least during