Human-cattle interactions in group housing

In traditional European tie stall barns the stockperson has close interaction with the cattle several times a day. New barns are, however, mostly loose housing units where the animals are group housed and normally have space to evade people. As group housed cattle can be less habituated to humans, they may be more difficult to handle compared to individually housed and they may become fearful of people. Fear is a negative feeling and continuous fear causes stress. That is why cattle should not be fearful of humans. Fear of humans can be avoided with positive human contact, which is especially effective to young calves. However, regularity of positive interactions is also important. The number of cattle per farm is increasing in Europe. The farmer is, therefore, facing the question of how to manage all the work at the farm. Professional stockpeople are difficult to find and the labour is expensive compared to the price of milk or meat. Technology could be a solution to these problems. This situation will lead to reduced human-cattle interactions and increased cattle-machine interactions. Thus, in modern European cattle husbandry, the time to individual handling and care of cattle will diminish, despite the fact that the individual care has been highly valued. The question is also, do we need individual handling of cattle or should we instead develop group handling methods. Cattle do not necessarily want to interact with humans apart from the situation when people offer them something to eat. A group of cattle is also known to alleviate the stress experiences of its members. If the welfare of cattle is to be secured, a need for individual care will remain. Absolutely reliable automatic instruments for health detection of cows have not existed until now and thus, the stockperson has had to identify individual cows from the group. Human-cattle interaction studies are mainly done with individually housed animals. Therefore, the effect of group housing and group size on human-cattle interactions needs to be studied. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.