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Exhaust Sniffers &
Nose Pushers...
By Heather Smith
Thomas |
Do
exhaust sniffers grow up to be nose pushers? |
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Young calves are curious and bold,
just like kids trying to check out their world and see what makes
everything tick. Calves lick, chew and taste everything —from dirt to
hay twines and fence posts (or go around licking the hair off the net
wire fence where their mothers have rubbed) Curiosity is natural, but
some of them take it to extreme and get into trouble, getting hairballs
or plugging their digestive tract with dirt or a blockage caused by
eating twines, plastic bags or other junk.
Every spring there are some individuals in our groups of calves who love
to follow the feed truck, trying to smell the exhaust. If the truck is
parked for a minute at the gate or left running while we ’re doing some
task out in the field, these calves stand by the exhaust pipe trying to
breathe in as much of the fumes as they can. My husband and I joke about
these exhaust junkies, hoping they don ’t overdose on carbon monoxide
—comparing them to human addicts who harm themselves with their
substance abuses. The calves, however, don’t seem to continue their
obsession as adults; we don’t have any cows that chase after the feed
truck trying to sniff exhaust, so we chalk it up to juvenile curiosity.
But adult cattle sometimes have strange behaviors that fall into a
category of obsessions we generally think of as being reserved for
humans.
Humans don ’t have a monopoly on bad habits, addictions, strange
behavior or compulsions. We tend to think people are the only ones that
become drug addicts, glue sniffers, alcoholics, chain smokers, etc. But
if you work with animals, you know that they also fall prey to
addictions, obsessive or compulsive behavior, or strange “habits
”,particularly when they are kept in an unnatural environment and
stressed.
Those of us who raise horses and cattle and spend a lot of time in close
contact with our animals have noticed that some individuals resort to
unusual behavior under certain conditions. Confined animals, in
particular, seem more prone to unnatural or unusual behavior. Domestic
animals experience a number of problems (physical and emotional) that
are never seen in their wild counterparts. Horses and cattle, for
instance, are herd animals that roam freely under natural conditions,
grazing and wandering, and taking part in the social interactions of the
group. The stress of confinement and/or isolation from others of their
kind can lead to behavioral changes.
In horses, for instance, the stress of being confined in a stall can
lead to problems like cribbing, weaving, head bobbing, stall walking,
stall kicking, self biting and other repetitive actions called
stereotypies. These are usually rhythmic or repeated actions. Other
examples of stereotypical behavior include paw-licking in confined dogs,
cage pacing in zoo animals, feather plucking in caged birds, and so on.
In horses, repetitive actions have been termed stable vices, but this is
not an appropriate term. Technically speaking, vices are undesirable
behaviors such as biting or bucking that can generally be corrected
through proper handling and training.
By contrast, stereotypies are a kind of obsessive/compulsive behavior
that is much more difficult to halt. By definition, a stereotypy
is a ritualistic or repetitive type of behavior that serves
no apparent purpose. Stereotypical behavior is seen in about
15 percent of domestic horses. The amount of time the horse
spends in these activities varies greatly from horse to horse and
may be random, or associated with a cue such as feeding
time; many confined horses habitually paw or kick the stall
walls at feeding time or become more intense in their cribbing or
weaving activities. The repetitive action is a way they ’ve
found to cope with stress. In most horses that start these
behaviors, it quickly becomes an addiction. Many cribbers, for
instance, will continue the habit even if they are removed from the
stall and turned out to pasture, and a weaver may still do his
ritualistic action or head bobbing by the pasture gate or whenever he is
confined again (put into a stall or a trailer, for instance).
Stereotypies in cattle are generally not so obvious, since they are
rarely confined as much as horses are. We usually don ’t put cattle into
individual stalls or pens, and most cattle are not as hyper as horses;
we don ’t see the same effects that are triggered by boredom in the
confined horse. But if you ’ve ever had cause to confine cattle in small
spaces —as in a feedlot situation or when they are confined in a small
pen or pasture for calving or winter feeding, you may have noticed some
abnormal behaviors.
For many years we calved in January, in order to avoid the mud and
scours of March/April, and to have the cows all rebred (to our own
bulls) in April before they went to summer range on public pastures. In
our steep mountains, range breeding was never a satisfactory option
because the cattle are widely scattered in rough terrain; cows don ’t
get bred up as quickly as in smallerpastures where there ’s always a
bull in close proximity. Range breeding, on our range, alwaysmeant a
long, strung out breeding and calving season. So we calved in January
and the cows would all breed up nicely in April, while still at home on
small pastures, in small breeding groups, with planned matings (the cows
put with the bull they best “nicked ” with, or one that was not their
own sire). We have very fertile cows and only gave them a 32 day
breeding season, then took the bulls out and sent the cows to summer
range —and this makes a nice, short calving season. But in these
conditions, the cattle are more closely confined than normal. During
January in our part of the country it can be 30 below zero at times, and
even during a mild winter it will drop below zero on cold nights.
So this means having the pregnant cows in an area close to the barn,
checking them frequently during the night, and putting them into the
barn when they go into labor. We calved in January for 35 years and our
cows are gentle and easy to handle —very mellow and seemingly at ease
with confinement.
Yet even an easy-going cow can be bored and frustrated by confinement.
When walking through our soon-to-calve cows at night, I noticed a
strange behavior. I first noticed it because I could hear the strange
snuffling sound of a cow slowly breathing through closed off nostrils.
The cow was standing with her head down, nose pressed against a frozen
manure pile, eyes closed, seemingly asleep. On closer inspection,
however, I could see she was not asleep, but in a sort of trance, with
upper lip jammed hard against the solid object. After while she ’d quit
“nose pushing” and go on about her normal activity, eating or chewing
her cud. After seeing this several times (several individuals who did
this more than once) I realized I was witnessing an addiction. These
cows had found a way to relieve their boredom and make themselves feel
good.
Since then I ’ve noticed some cows do this routinely when confined. This
spring we had a couple cows who “nose pushed ” on an old coffee can
covering a well casing in one of our small pens, when they were confined
in that pen with their young calves for a few days. Even in a pasture
with room to roam, if it ’s winter or early spring and there ’s no grass
to graze (to occupy their time and interest) and just hay to eat, the
hay is generally eaten within a few hours and this leaves the cow with
not much to do the rest of the day. Some relieve their boredom by nose
pushing—on an old tree stump or on the metal edge of the water tank. Any
firm surface will do.
Stereotypical behavior in horses (repetitive actions) or nose pushing in
cattle are actions that increase the release of certain chemicals
(endorphins) in the body that make the animal feel good. These chemicals
are morphine-like proteins (also called opiods) that suppress pain and
create a pleasurable sensation. Horses seem to be relaxed and “spaced
out ” after a cribbing or weaving session.
In horses that crib or weave, the constant repetitive activity triggers
the endorphin release. Thus when a horse learns that his weaving
motions or cribbing (which he began in response to the stress of
confinement, as an outlet for pent up energy and frustration) give him
pleasure, he may keep up the habit even when he ’s not confined and
stressed, because he gets his “fix ” by going through these motions and
he craves the endorphins. Also, there are pressure points beneath the
top lip, in horses and cattle, that when pressed stimulate the release
of endorphins. This is why a horse can becalmed and “sedated ” when
twitched (the thong or chain of the twitch, twisted around the top lip
of the horse, puts pressure on this area) or when a lip chain or cord is
applied beneath the top lip against the gum. And this is why cattle, if
they discover the effects created by pressing the top lip against a
solid surface, may continue this habit.
A bovine probably discovers this addiction by accident, just as a horse
discovers that his frustrated attempt at getting out of his stall
(walking back and forth by the door, or eventually refining the motions
to shifting his weight back and forth as he bobs his head, or grabbing
the manger or any other available surface in his teeth and later
perfecting the action of jerking his head back and swallowing air
—cribbing) makes him feel better.
Perhaps the cow started by rubbing her face and nose on a solid surface
to scratch an itch and then found that pressing her nose harder, putting
pressure on the gum beneath the lip, made her feel good. However it
started, the ones that learn how to trigger their internal “narcotics ”
often continuethe habit —and you may see them nose pushing when they
have nothing better to do. So don’t be alarmed if you see a cow nose
pushing, standing there in a trance. This is just her way of kicking
back with a beer or a cigarette, getting her fix. |
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