Contented Cows Can Eat Weeds
AUSTRALIA – Cattle can be encouraged to experiment with their diet and even eat weeds, animal behaviour experts say.This is according to research from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) which links adventurous diets with more productive and healthy livestock, reports ABC Rural.
New South Wales stock consultant, Bruce Maynard says cattle will experiment with their diet, providing they are comfortable with their environment.
"What happens in any group of animals is you do have experimenters and you do have very conservative animals, and everything in between," he says.
"So you've got a bell curve of behaviours there and what we're going to do is work on emphasising the inventiveness of the mob and by taking anxiety away what we're going to do is shift that whole bell curve just a little bit and you end up with more weed eaters in there."
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