On a farm where cows freely relieve themselves as they graze, the accumulation and spread of waste often contaminates local soil and waterways. This can be controlled by confining the cows in barns, but in these close quarters their urine and feces combine to create ammonia, an indirect greenhouse gas. In an article published on September 13 in the journal Current Biology, researchers show that cows can be potty-trained, enabling waste to be collected and treated, thereby cleaning up the barn, reducing air pollution, and creating more open, animal-friendly farms.
"It's usually assumed that cattle are not capable of controlling defecation or urination," says co-author Jan Langbein, an animal psychologist at the Research Institute for Farm Animal Biology (FBN) in Germany, but he and his team questioned this thinking. "Cattle, like many other animals or farm animals are quite clever and they can learn a lot. Why shouldn't they be able to learn how to use a toilet?"
To potty-train the calves, a process they dubbed MooLoo training, the research team with scientists from FBN, FLI (Germany) and the University of Auckland (New Zealand) worked backward. They started off by rewarding the calves when they urinated in the latrine, and then they allowed the calves to approach the latrines from outside when they needed to urinate.
The ammonia produced in cow waste doesn't directly contribute to climate change, but when it is leached into the soil, microbes convert it into nitrous oxide, the third-most important greenhouse gas after methane and carbon dioxide. Agriculture is the largest source of ammonia emissions, with livestock farming making up over half of that contribution.