Transcript of AE 1035 - The Goss: Toilet Training Cows to Fight Climate Change

G'day, you mob. Pete here, and this is another episode of Aussie English. The number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So, today I have a Goss episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen, and we talk about the week's news whether locally down under here in Australia or non-locally overseas in other parts of the world.

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Okay, so if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time, keep practising, and that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit, I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode, guys. Smack the bird and let's get into it.

G'day, guys. Welcome to this episode of The Goss'. Today we are talking about toilet training cows, and hopefully I'll learn something so that I can pass this onto Noah.

...Are we talking about cows that have been toilet trained or cows that are able to toilet train other things?

No, yeah, just cows that have been toilet trained. So, the article was called... (both talking) The article was, we managed to toilet train cows, and they learnt faster than a toddler can. It could help combat climate change. So, what do we got here? The sort of two questions where can you toilet train cows and why would you want to? And the answer is yes. Doing so can help us address issues of water contamination and climate change.

So, cattle urine is high in nitrogen, and this contributes to a range of environmental problems. When cows are kept mainly outdoors as they are in New Zealand and Australia, the nitrogen from the urine breaks down in the soil. And this produces two problematic substances, nitrate and nitrous oxide.

Nitrate from urine patches leaches into lakes, rivers, aquifers, underground pools of water contained by rock, where it pollutes the water and contributes to excessive growth of weeds and algae. And nitrous oxide is a long-lasting greenhouse gas, which is three hundred times more potent than carbon dioxide. It accounts for about 12% of New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions, and much of this comes from the agricultural sector.

So, yeah, what do we got here? The other issue is ammonia. So, when cows are kept mainly in barns, as in the case in Europe and North America another polluting gas, ammonia is produced from the nitrogen from the urine mixing with faeces on the barn floor. But if- So, yeah.

However, if some of the urine produced by cattle could be captured and treated, the nitrogen contains- The nitrogen it contains could be diverted and the environmental impacts reduced. So, that's, I guess, the whole premise for these people doing this study.

They took eight cows, they set up a pen that was obviously enabled to collect any urine that was done on there, and they used reinforce- A reinforce, so behavioural psychology in order to train these cows to urinate in this specific location. So, they effectively gave them a reward any time they peed- Well, they put them in the pen first, when they peed, they gave them a reward.

They then started putting them in an alley outside, and if they peed before they went back into the pen, they got a spray, an unpleasant spray of water in the face or something like that. And then when they went back into the pen, they'd get the reward. And so, apparently within twenty to twenty-five urinations, you know, they had learnt this behaviour, to just go to this one location to pee so that it could be collected in this pen.

And seven out of the eight cows was trained successfully, only 15 days of training, and it was quicker than it takes to train a three to four year old child to obviously use a potty or something. So, this showed us two things that weren't known before. Cattle can learn to attend to their own urination reflex because they move to the pen when ready to use it.

And cattle will learn to withhold urination until they're in the right place if they're rewarded for doing so. And the next step was scaling it up and working out two further challenges, which was that they need a way to both detect urination in the latrine pen as well as deliver the reinforcement automatically, so without using any sort of human intervention. Obviously, it's going to cost a lot if you've got a guy there giving the cows...

...His hand out. Have a bit of grain.

I know, that's it. And then they need to determine optimal location, a number of latrine pens that are required. So, obviously, if you've got a huge farm, that's, you know, what, hundreds of metres, kilometres from the pen where the cow has to work- Walk, they have to work out how far are cattle actually willing to walk to get whatever the reward is.

Imagine working that out and being like, okay, it turns out that it's 854 metres anything longer than that and the cows like, yeah, screw it, keep your reward. Even shorter than that, and the cow will walk, you know, however long it takes to get to the the toilet and do a pee.

So, I thought it was just a really, really cool study that, yeah. It is one of these things, we think cows are really stupid, but you- Sometimes I've seen these YouTube videos and even just seeing them in the field, you see them playing or interacting with humans and your kind of like, you know, we eat these animals, and we think they're incredibly dumb.

But I think, you know, there's actually a lot more to them and a lot more going on than we really give them credit for, right?

Oh yeah, exactly, you know, we're- They, I mean, you know, they are well-developed social mammals, so they got to have a fair brain in order to understand their society. And so, that sort of- And this is not rocket science psychology, the sort of training they're doing.

The idea of positive reinforcement has been used for years. I mean, we've trained dogs for thousands of years based on, you know, the dog does the right thing give him a reward. You know, you ask the dog to come to you and the dog comes to you, give him a pat on the head. You don't even need to start feeding them, so there's all sorts of...

Just don't hit them. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, and that's the other one. I haven't read the full article, but it's sort of negative reinforcement is often not as effective, nowhere near as effective. Which you suggested they were doing that as well, but.

I think the only negative reinforcement was, yeah, just that unpleasant water in the face, so they obviously have to sort of limit it to something that's relatively benign. And it's just like, oh, that's annoying. As opposed to, you know, kicking the shit out of them or something. Yeah, I don't think he's going to learn, mate, you just killed him.

Yeah, cos they're often- Yeah, that. Particularly in training dogs and horses and those sort of things, negative reinforcement tends not to work in the direction that the person thinks it is.

Well, yeah, in terms of animosity with your owner.

Yeah, well, exactly. So, it's that, you know... When you're training a puppy to be toilet trained, you know, puppy goes pee or poo on the piece of newspaper that you've set up, you give it a reward. If the puppy does it somewhere else and you smack it the puppy won't learn that, that's not the right place to do it. The puppy just learns that you're an arsehole.

Yeah.

So, it's, you know, you've got to be very careful, whereas positive reinforcement is very easily connected to the thing that you want, providing it's effec- You know, close to instantaneous.

Well, and we've shown that rats can do it. I mean, there's those experiments where they get addicted to cocaine, right. And they just keep hitting the button. And even pigeons can do it as well, right. So...

All sorts of animals can do it. Yeah.

So...

Yeah, it's an interesting story. That one, I mean, I just when I was, you know, having a quick glance through it, I thought this one could be done very well in terms of dairy cattle. Because dairy cattle...

Follow each other.

They follow each other, but they come into sheds twice a day.

Yeah.

So, if you have the latrine capturing devices on the trail into the dairy sheds, then they have to pee in order to come in and be...

Relieved of the pressure of all that milk.

...Then that in itself would be useful, so you don't have them peeing in the shed as well, so.

I need to look into that and how they train the cows to come in., I guess they probably reward them the same way. Or there's a reward in that the cows get relieved of the fact that they have so much milk and pressure, you know...

They're probably using a- I haven't read this article. They're probably using that strategy, they call it, I think it's called back chaining...

Yeah, that was what they mentioned.

...Where you, you give them the like, here's the reward instantly.

Yeah.

And then, you know, in this case, it's a distance thing. So, if they come within 10 metres of the thing, you just give them the reward...

That's exactly what they were using.

...Fifty metres, you give them the reward. And so, once they've learned that they get a reward for peeing on the panel...

Yeah.

...Then they get a reward for coming close to it and then they get a reward for coming anywhere near it. And so, you're actually encouraging them to come there as well. What you don't want to do, of course, in the case of cattle, you can block them off from it. But you don't want to be sitting there effectively crossing their legs all day and not peeing in the paddock.

Yeah.

...And then going, oh, quick, quick, quick and knocking each other out of the way to get to the latrine. But I wonder if you have to sort of balance what the reward is going to be. So, it's not too good that they're going to be like, you know, injuring themselves.

...Hundred metres, that's close.

Yeah, but not so bad that they're like, yeah, nah, screw it. I'll just do it here.

...800 and whatever metres that you said, that's, you know, anything. If I got to walk 800 metres to go to the toilet I'm going to pee behind the tree. And I'm sure, cows will work that out as well.

And that, for me, as a scientist would be the more interesting side of it would be working out what their preferences are for these sorts of things. In terms of the reward, if you created different rewards...

Yeah.

...Use different distances, it would be really interesting to know, okay, so they'll- Well, they'll do it for this, but not- They would if you just did it across groups, right?

Yeah.

So, you have these groups of like 10 kilometres, these ones are one kilometre, these ones are two metres.

These are the dumb ones, so.

Here's one where you get like a pretty average reward. And here the other reward is like, you know, cocaine laced.

Yeah, exactly.

It's just like, how would it change, or would it change anything? Anyway, that's probably enough for this one, dad. Thanks for smashing out all these episodes. You guys will obviously be getting one at a time, but dad and I have just done two hours and 20 minutes.

Yeah. Yes, exactly. So.

Yeah. All right.

All right, see ya everyone.

Peace.

Alrighty, you mob. Thank you so much for listening to or watching this episode of The Goss'. If you would like to watch the video if you're currently listening to it and not watching it, you can do so on the Aussie English Channel on YouTube. You'll be able to subscribe to that, just search "Aussie English" on YouTube.

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I'm your host, Pete. Thank you so much for joining me. I hope you have a ripper of a day, and I will see you next time. Peace!