"The cow is very familiar." "We take it for granted." "But it's one of the most successful species on Earth." "She's already up to over a litre of milk gone out." "A litre of milk and she's been plugged in for a couple of seconds." "C'mon." "There are 1.5 billion of them on the planet." "That's one cow for every five people." "He's quite romantic, though." "Is he?" "Yes, it's not just sort of wham, bam, thank you, mam." "I'm going to find out what it is about cows that has allowed them to form this special relationship with humans." "I've set up a series of experiments to find out more about their unique qualities." "Do cows have intelligence?" "She's bashing it." "BELL RINGS" "Good girl!" "Why are some more popular than others?" "They're turning away from her!" "Oh, my god!" "They don't want to know her, do they?" "And why do cows attack?" "They're not friendly, are they?" "The question really is which ones can run faster." "Ooh." "That's a nasty piece of work, Jilly, isn't it?" "What I discover will change the way we think about the humble cow." "For more than 8,000 years, humans have raised and farmed cows." "Come on." "I've got a small group of Red Poll cattle on my farm." "They're a native Suffolk breed and are an important part of my life here." "Hello, love." "Hello." "They're one of the very first animals that humans domesticated." "And we've lived with them for so long that I think we tend to take them for granted." "Good girls." "Most animals can't be farmed." "There are 200 or so large land mammal species." "But over 90% have proved impossible to domesticate." "So cattle are actually part of a very special group." "I want to know why they've succeeded where so many other animals have failed." "I've come to Fortescue Farm in Devon." "In size and scale, it's fairly typical of the average beef farm in the UK." "So there's spring barley in here and wheat and oats..." "It's run by Jilly Greed, a fourth-generation farmer, with a huge passion for her cattle." "Right, if I grab a couple of those." "You don't want the pink one?" "No, I'll leave you with the pink one." "There we go." "Right, you lead on." "So how many animals have you got here, then?" "There's about 200." "200, that's a lot of animals, isn't it?" "Jilly breeds cattle in a traditional way, so this is an ideal herd to study their behaviour." "Isn't it interesting?" "When you look at a field of cows, most people think well they're all the same, a cow's a cow, and to be honest most people probably think cows aren't that bright, but there's a lot of behaviour, that's hidden amongst cows, isn't there?" "I happen to think that cows are extremely intelligent." "I think that there's a consciousness, an awareness of how they are in a group." "And if they're handled the right way you can get the best out of the cows." "Over the next ten days, I'll be running a series of experiments on these animals, to discover what goes on in a cow's mind." "We're going to go to the lower courtyard now." "That's what I love about farms, all these nooks and crannies." "Yeah." "Hello." "Hello." "That's Corcovado." "Jilly grew up on this farm and took over from her father 11 years ago." "She now runs it with the help of her husband." "And this is my best beloved, Edwin." "How're you doing?" "Hello, Jimmy." "Nice to meet you." "Hard at work." "Hard at work, my man." "Yeah, just having a look at some of your animals." "Amazing." "Who's this?" "Ooh, ooh, ooh, this is, this is nasty cow." "That was aggressive, wasn't it?" "Ooh, she's horrible." "That's Litchen." "Litchen." "Yes." "Why have you got such a nasty cow?" "Edwin really loves her." "Why's she so aggressive?" "She wants to attack me." "No, it's me." "She doesn't like me." "Really?" "Yeah." "She doesn't like me." "Why do you allow this?" "She hates me and I hate her." "It's as simple as that." "I've never seen such an angry..." "Look, she's giving herself lines she's frowning so much." "Hello." "See, she's fine with me but she's right on you, isn't she?" "Litchen's a breed called Blonde D'Aquitaine - a muscular animal which produces lovely lean beef, but not much milk." "Modern cattle farms are specialised, either in beef or dairy." "Before World War Two, things were very different." "After the war, farmers needed to boost production and cattle farming became much more intensive." "This mechanical milkmaid draws the milk gently through sterilised pipes into a special closed pail." "In 1945, a dairy cow produced an average of 3,500 litres of milk a year." "Today's cows produce double that, at 7,000 litres a year." "Either way, milk is delicious." "Roast beef was a Sunday treat." "Nowadays it accounts only for 20% of the beef we eat at home." "The rest is mostly burgers, mince and processed meat products." "To meet the world's demand for beef, the cattle population is set to almost double in the next 50 years." "There are nine million cattle in Britain." "Jilly's herd are reared for beef." "Now in this shed here what have we got?" "Well, these are in the B team." "B team being what?" "If you're in the A team you've been selected as breeding stock." "Lovely." "Yes, which is where you really want to be if you're a beef animal on this farm." "Cattle can live for 20 years, but these male calves will be ready for slaughter in six months' time when they're just one year old." "The young females will follow when they're two." "You've got to be very hard-nosed about it and say they're here for a purpose." "I mean we're not keeping a farm for cows, as a cow sanctuary, you know, it's got to be run on a commercial basis." "But Jilly keeps most of her cattle for many years." "120 are kept back for breeding." "She knows each one of them individually." "They're all characters in here." "Each one's got its own individual character?" "Yes, they have and there are some that are more bossy and dominant than others." "Hello, who's this?" "Ooh, this is Violet." "Hello, Violet." "And Violet's already spotted you've got the bucket." "Yeah, look at that, straight in." "Yeah." "Look at that, she's really friendly isn't she?" "Yes, she is." "These cows are Jilly's A-Team." "They'll produce a calf each year for up to 15 years." "Rose is eight and Violet is six." "Rose, she's original South Devon here." "And look at her face." "It's beautiful." "Look at the curly old head on her." "She's really quiet." "She's quite a sweetie." "I had a great aunt called Rose." "Did you?" "She had hair like that." "Did she?" "This group are perfect for my experiments." "They're calm, tame animals, and they've lived together for a long time, so we should be able to observe their natural behaviour." "The first thing I want to test is how intelligent cows are." "Let's face it, they don't exactly have a brainy reputation." "Bovine." "Related to cattle." "Slow-witted or stupid." "Vacuous, mindless, witless." "Ignorant, unintelligent, pea-brained." "These are all pretty bad, aren't they?" "It seems to me the cow has had a bit of bad press and it's time to do them justice, I think." "When I look into a cow's eyes, I don't think they look so stupid." "The thing is, cows have had to adapt to a pretty strange environment." "A farm is not a natural habitat for any animal." "Cows have had to learn a new way of life and that takes a certain level of intelligence." "So just how smart is a cow?" "To help me find out, I've invited along an old friend." "What you want to do first is poke it, poke it under here." "Yep." "And so the wires come out here first." "You've always been quite bossy, Marc, haven't you?" "Here we go." "Do you remember I used to copy your work at university, Marc?" "You used to sit behind me in all the exams, Jim." "And say, "Marc, what about this?"" "Dr Marc Cooper and I go back a long way." "And lucky for me he's now a farm animal scientist at the RSPCA." "These experiments are really important." "You know, they're really key to help us understanding a bit more about those animals, how they feel." "They can't talk to us, but they can express how they feel through actions." "Marc's used his knowledge of cattle behaviour to design this experiment." "Now, this might look a bit Heath Robinson, but what Marc and I are building here is a gadget to test the intelligence of cows." "BELL RINGS Perfect." "This is like some Laurel and Hardy film." "Here we go." "Most people would scoff at the idea of teaching an old cow a new trick." "But this is no joke." "We want to see whether a cow can learn to ring a doorbell in order to get a food reward." "Other animals like dogs, monkeys and rats can be readily trained to do a test, but it's a big ask for a cow." "Here we are, these are the girls, these are the special girls." "So these are going to be our cows that are going to be part of the experiment." "Yeah, these three." "Poplin and Privet and Swift." "I mean, they're smart cows, they know what's what, but..." "You sound hesitant, now this is a test for intelligence." "Yes." "Are you telling me your cows aren't up to it?" "Well, I think they are but I don't want to count my chickens before they're hatched." "Right, let's move 'em though." "Right I've just got to put some overalls on." "Because what I've got to do now is actually get acquainted with the cows and become their friend, and I'm going to do that in a special way." "To the cows, I don't just LOOK like a stranger, I smell like one." "There's a good girl, aren't you, eh." "A cow's nose is far more sensitive than a human's and could even rival a dog's." "So the way I smell is really important if they are to accept me." "Look at that." "Nice lot of cow hairs, smells really cowy." "Don't know if it'll catch on as an aftershave but it's exactly what I want cos I want to smell of the herd." "Look at that one looking." "That one's thinking, "What on Earth's going on?"" "Now we're ready to start the experiment." "The first stage is to teach them the association between the bell and food." "What we want to do is get them interested in this device here." "Right." "So we need to do everything we can to attract them over here and get them interested in playing with it, essentially." "So we want to put a little bit of food on here to start with." "OK." "I'll just put my hand there." "You just tip plenty on there." "You've got to encourage them, Jimmy." "If they accidentally press the bell or the lever and the bell goes off, you just put a bit more food in, say, "Good girl", just like you would do with a dog." "What if they do that, that spooks them and they trample me?" "That's the end of the experiment." "This, of course, is what the famous Russian scientist Pavlov did with dogs." "He taught dogs to associate food with a light." "And soon the dogs found the light as mouth-watering as the food alone." "I don't know if it's ever been done with cows." "But I hope they'll be able to master this association between bell and food." "Right, c'mon ladies." "C'mon." "And you." "C'mon." "C'mon, Poplin." "C'mon, Poplin." "They've noticed the food." "But they haven't touched the bell." "Go on, push the bell." "BELL RINGS There we are!" "Say good girl, put some food in." "Good girl." "As soon as that bell goes you've got to reward her straightaway." "That's the key to it, so she's getting that sense..." "BELL RINGS" "Good girl." "Good girl." "Good girl, good girl." "BELL RINGS REPEATEDLY" "Quick, quick!" "Just little bits each time." "Good girl." "That's it." "That's good." "'We're trying to reinforce the connection between the bell and food.'" "Good girl." "What you could try now is to put a bit of food in a bucket and just hold the bucket underneath so she only gets the bucket of food when she's pressing that bell." "BELL RINGS Good girl." "Good girl." "I wonder if Privet's already starting to make a connection." "So when she's back inside, I have a go at ringing the bell myself." "Here she comes." "Look at that." "I ring the bell and she comes out." "Privet has already shown she knows there's a connection between the bell and food." "That's it, good girl." "Now things are getting much tougher." "She has to learn to ring the bell when there's no food there." "She's not sure." "It's really quite interesting because you can see the thoughts are percolating through the brain, but there's food, here's the bell, but not quite sure of the connection yet." "So far, it's not looking good." "Our cows don't seem to be making the leap." "Over the next few days, Poplin, Privet and Swift will have more training sessions, then we'll give them a final test at the end of the week." "I think Privet did really well and Poplin's just finding her feet, isn't she?" "That's it." "Yeah." "Here's to the cows." "Here's to the cows." "The cows." "Cheers." "Right, have to taste some of this." "Yeah." "Should be really tender." "Ooh, that's lovely." "That's what you call intelligent beef, is it?" "Which ones did you like the best?" "Well..." "I know this will probably upset you." "But I quite like Litchen." "I don't believe you said that!" "Because, not..." "Because she's friendly, she's quite aggressive, but I quite like her spirit and she stands out so much." "You've got to admire the difference in spirit." "And seeing that extreme really crystallises, for me, that they are all individuals." "Cows may be individuals but, as every cowboy knows, they naturally live in herds." "It's something we take for granted." "But it's one of their most important characteristics." "Humans have been moving cattle around for centuries and I'm going to find out how it's done." "Miriam Parker's an international expert on cattle handling." "And she's here to help me get inside the mind of the cow." "I'm going to sort of be trying to read the cows and their behaviour but also they're going to be reading my behaviour and my body language." "Absolutely, yep, because that's part of the communication." "There's two of them here and they're quite flighty," "OK, so I want to try and get closer to them so that we can actually start to control the movement." "Miriam's giving me a master class with two of the more nervous members of the group, Katrina and Calico." "In the wild, cows needed to look out for predators." "They have huge pupils." "Their eyes can collect more light than ours." "Like all prey animals, they're sensitive to sudden movement." "Their eyes are on the side of the head so they can see in a massive 330 degree arc, which means they can detect potential predators from all directions." "They're always going to try and keep some distance between us as the threat and themselves just to keep them safe, it's their safety zone." "Good girls." "Now." "Ready?" "Every cow has a flight zone, like an invisible ring round the animal." "Miriam needs to measure this distance to control the cows." "If she keeps outside it, they'll stay put." "If she enters it, they'll move." "By moving in and out the flight zone, Miriam reassures the cattle she's not going to attack." "Low voice." "A little bit of talking, just to let them know where I am." "Every cow's flight zone is different." "If Miriam gets it right, she'll be able to move them away from the hedge to wherever she wants." "Good girls." "Ch, ch, ch." "Lot of psychology and basically understanding what's going on inside the cow's mind." "We've now got them in the middle of the field." "Right." "So, already they're getting used to my presence, I'm getting a bit closer each time." "Now just see how much control we've got." "OK, good girls." "OK, so we'll go around, keep outside the flight zone, go to the front." "And we're going to go in." "Good girls." "On you go." "That's it." "Just a tiny step in is all it took." "So there's two animals that were really flighty." "And now... putty in Miriam's hands." "All right, girls." "Miriam can control the cows' movement because she's worked out their flight zone." "It's almost like a reward." "Yeah." "Put the pressure on, you go the way I want then I'll just let you chill." "It looks easy!" "Go on." "Go on." "Go on." "Go on." "Go on, go on." "You've got to give 'em that passageway." "You're standing right in behind them, pushing them into the corner." "Who's in control, Jimmy?" "Yeah." "Go on you little swine, that's it." "If I go in, they go faster, out slower." "Yeah." "OK, and you don't necessarily need to wave your stick, just go in with your body, come on." "Easy, Jimmy?" "No, it's not, is it?" "Confident asserter, Jimmy." "We need a little bit more "I'm here, I'm in control."" "So basically, you're messing with Jimmy." "'I'm starting to get the hang of it." "'But I'll need a lot more practice to become a real cow herder.'" "It's like a dance, isn't it?" "It is like a dance." "Dancing with cows." "Dancing with cows." "Hello, girls." "So cows have just the right level of fear." "They'll keep a wary distance but, if handled properly, they won't scare." "Many animals, like antelope and most species of deer, can't be domesticated because the slightest surprise causes them to bolt." "If you tried to fence in a herd of gazelles, they'd batter themselves to death on the fence trying to escape in a panic." "With techniques like Miriam's, that use the cow's flight instincts, our ancestors were able to round up cattle into controllable groups." "After watching Jilly's herd, I'm realising that a lot of the cows' behaviour has come from their wild ancestors." "Now wild cattle died out thousands of years ago, but what I would love to know is what those animals would have been like." "We can't bring the original wild cow back to life, but 400 miles away, in Northumberland, I might be about to meet the next best thing." "The wild cattle at Chillingham are the stuff of legend." "700 years ago, one of the lords of Chillingham Castle decided to let a herd of cattle run free, without human interference." "He reckoned that having wild cattle would provide him with an exciting hunt and, at the same time, deter cattle rustlers." "The herd have been here ever since." "It's quite exciting this, it's a bit like being on safari." "I'm about to get my first glimpse of these wild cattle." "Look at them." "The cattle have been left to their own devices for centuries." "They're the closest thing on Earth to a wild cow." "Professor Stephen Hall has been studying the behaviour of the cattle for over 30 years." "He believes the Chillingham herd gives us vital clues to the behaviour of the cow's wild ancestors." "You have to keep your distance." "Cos they're not friendly, are they?" "They might run off but they could easily turn round and have a go." "Yes, there have been plenty of records of distinguished visitors being chased up trees." "I'm glad we've got a few trees around us then." "Well, yes." "Although, the question really is, which of us can run faster." "To domesticate an animal that would be ferocious, good set of horns, lived in a herd, would take a lot to do." "Domestication in its early stages involved taming, and taming would involve convincing the animal that it must hand over responsibility for its life to you." "In other words, take you on as a parent figure." "Right." "A herd of wild cattle is ruled by a dominant male." "In nature you've got competition and that's what we have here." "These bulls will compete for matings." "A bull must fight off other suitors and win the right to mate with the females." "What makes it even more difficult for the bulls is they don't have a rut." "They breed all year round, and that means that a cow could come into season at any time of year." "So the bulls have to be ready all the time." "They might have to break off what they're doing and go off and beat someone up." "Yeah." "Yeah." "At Chillingham there are as many bulls as there are cows." "This is very different from Jilly's farm." "This is Early." "Hello, fella." "He's very calm, isn't he?" "Good boy." "He's lovely, isn't he?" "Are we walking him straight out, or is he having head collar on?" "Yeah, put the head collar on, Michael." "Earl is one of only three breeding bulls on the farm." "Jilly counts on him to make sure every cow in the herd is pregnant." "Away he goes." "C'mon then, good boy." "A bull can mate with 20 cows in one day." "Though each coupling only lasts for ten seconds." "He's quite romantic, though." "Is he?" "Yes." "It's not just sort of, wham, bam, thank you, mam, any of that." "There's a courtship that goes on, there is romance." "There you are." "He's calling to them, isn't he?" "Yes. "I've arrived."" "This is the king arriving." "That snorting." "Look at it." "Wow, he's changed his whole expression." "Completely." "Look at all the girls coming over." "He's loving this." "I don't think he's going to get any peace today, I don't think they are either but I think they're loving it." "They're all loving it." "Earl's job is tougher than it seems." "A cow is only fertile for a single day every three weeks." "If he attempts to mount a cow on any other day, he'll get the cold shoulder." "But Earl has a way to tell if a cow is up for it." "When a cow is receptive she gives off a chemical signal, called a pheromone." "Humans can't sense it, but a bull can." "Earl curls his lip and sucks in the pheromones, passing them over a special sensory organ." "It looks like Earl's out of luck." "None of the cows are on heat today." "But Earl's not wasting his time." "Bulls can tell when a cow's about to become receptive and make a mental note to come back in the future." "It's a sort of internal dating diary." "Very handy!" "Well, now we're just leaving him here to get on with it and hopefully he'll do the job." "That's what we hope." "Right." "OK." "Let's leave him to it." "It'd put you off, being watched all the time, wouldn't it?" "Farmers have selected which animals they breed from." "They modify the species by picking animals with the traits they want." "Over thousands of years, we've turned wild cattle into a animal that meets our needs - tame, fast-growing and productive." "Today there are 100 breeds of cattle in the world, all with different traits." "The Hereford is famed for its longevity." "The Aberdeen Angus can thrive in any climate." "The Shorthorn calves quickly and easily." "The North Devon has a very thick hide so is resistant to parasites." "All this has been achieved through selecting which animals to breed from." "Oh, my gosh, here she comes." "She's eyeing you up, Jilly." "She's definitely coming for me, isn't she?" "Ooh!" "That's a nasty piece of work, Jilly, isn't it?" "If Jilly had her way, the one cow they wouldn't breed from is Litchen." "She's huge." "She's pretty big." "She's a monster cow." "She's the biggest cow I've ever seen!" "Today it's the cows' annual pregnancy test and Jilly will find out whether Litchen is pregnant." "It's an important day for the cows." "On a beef farm, a barren cow has no commercial value, and will be sent for slaughter." "What's the verdict?" "Three-and-a-half." "Three-and-a-half months pregnant." "Yeah." "So she's pregnant." "I don't believe it." "She's staying." "Do you want to come and look at it Jilly, on the screen?" "Come and have a look." "It's a beautiful little boy." "There's its head, there, its head and its nose is like a little skeletal head looking upwards." "Yes, yes." "There's a leg moving." "Look at it kicking." "So she's three months pregnant." "Yeah." "So in six months time she should have a calf." "Yeah." "Litchen mark two." "Yeah." "So should just be like the mother." "So you'll have to get your running shoes on." "Please, dear God, please not." "A few years ago, I visited a beautiful farm in the remote Scottish Highlands run by farmer Tilly Smith." "At Wild Farm, these Belted Galloway cattle are left to roam." "Just by chance, we came across a calf being born." "Could be a heifer, looks like a heifer with first calf you see." "Oh, is it?" "Think so." "It's not a big cow." "Given the chance, a cow giving birth will usually try to isolate herself from the rest of the herd." "Oh, here we go." "The cow's cervix stretches and triggers the release of a hormone called oxytocin." "This is what makes the mother and calf bond." "You can get up now, you can get up." "Oxytocin helps the mother remember the smell of her calf, which is how she'll recognise it throughout its life." "This is always the best bit." "Absolutely." "They look like drunk men, don't they, trying to stagger home." "It's nice to see he didn't fall down the bank." "There we go." "I hope he doesn't go down the bank." "That would be a shame." "Oh." "Oh, my god." "Oh, my god." "Don't go down the bank." "Down the bank." "Could you please not come this way?" "Woah." "It's amazing, if we weren't here..." "If you weren't here that would have been in the water, but that's all..." "I think it might have been." "..part and parcel of it." "Within the first five minutes, the cow licks the calf all over, which makes the coat dry out and keeps it warm." "The cow-calf bond is extremely strong." "Mothers can recognise their calf for many years." "But it's this maternal instinct that can make a placid cow snap into a dangerous killer." "We're doing, very much, the same sort of thing thousands of people up and down the country do." "Walk their dogs along country lanes." "As dogs go, Misty's a little bit daft, but all dogs descend from wolves, and the cows see even Misty as a predator." "Suddenly, the cows notice the dog." "Oh, yeah, look." "Bong." "Yeah." "Bong, bong." "Another one there." "What's going on?" "Yep." "I'm going to stand back and let Jilly go ahead with her dog to show me how the cows react." "Jilly knows her cows really well and, also, she knows her dog." "But what she's trying to demonstrate is that even if you know your cows, underneath domestication is the wild animal." "That instinct is still there." "All of the cows have looked up and the majority are now facing her." "There we go, spins round so it's facing the dog." "So they're all in this sort of protective posture." "They've formed a sort of a semi circle round Jilly." "The cows position themselves so they can observe the dog from a safe distance." "Don't get surrounded by them." "Ramblers are being warned to take more care near cattle after three people died in as many months after being trampled by cows." "In the last ten years, cattle have injured over 1,000 people and killed at least 30." "A woman was trampled by cows and died just a few weeks ago." "You might think bulls are scary." "But the females of the species can be just as deadly." "This is Peter Hallam minutes after he was attacked by a herd of cows." "In fact, cows cause more deaths and injuries than bulls." "I thought, I'm not going to get out of this." "Hi, Jilly." "Are you coming back now?" "Young animals are at greatest risk from a predator." "So mothers with very young calves are at their most aggressive and the most likely to attack, using their half-ton bulk to fight off intruders." "So, Jilly, if you're in a field with cows and you've got a dog and they come rushing over, what do you suggest people do then?" "Well, first of all, let the dog off the lead." "Right." "Don't hang on to the dog because it's the dog that they're going after." "The dog wants to get away, and more importantly you've got to get away." "Yeah." "So get out of the cows' environment as quick as possible." "It's only under stress that those aggressive wild instincts emerge." "If cows are properly handled, they'll live happily with humans." "For my next experiment I want to find out a bit more about a cow's social life." "The easiest animals to domesticate are those that are in a herd where one dominant animal rules the group." "Normally, cows have a very strict hierarchy, and Jilly's cows are a very consistent, placid group - all comfortable with each other." "But what happens when we take out the leader?" "Good girls." "On you go, good girls." "BELL RINGS Good girl." "The most dominant cows in Jilly's herd seem to be Poplin and Privet." "But we've taken them off to learn to press a doorbell." "What do the cows get up to when the head cow is away?" "I want to uncover the individual social network of every cow in the herd." "Go on, love." "That's the job." "Over the next four days, we're going to monitor every single one of the cows' interactions night and day." "To help us record them, we're fitting each cow with a unique electronic collar." "The collars will record every time one cow gets up close and personal with another." "Time to sit back and watch." "But there's not much going on at the moment." "It's sort of edge-of-your-seat stuff this, isn't it?" "Yeah, it's riveting." "According to the old wives' tale, cattle lie down when it's going to rain, but that's not much use." "Cows like to spend around ten hours a day lounging on the grass." "They're not wasting their time, though, this is valuable chewing time." "Grass is hard to digest, but cows are able to regurgitate partly-digested food and chew it some more." "It's called rumination and it's what enables them to get the maximum nutrition out of grass." "Ooh!" "Oh, what's happened?" "Look - interaction there." "Where's that?" "The brown, second from the right." "Did you say the brown cow second from the right?" "They're all brown!" "We're about to clear off when, finally, the cattle start to move." "There's four, five, six up now." "Yeah, they're all getting up now, look." "Yeah." "The cows all seem to be moving as a group." "But there's one that's been left behind." "That's Rose." "She's not one of the herd, is she?" "In the wild she wouldn't last long, would she?" "No, she wouldn't." "If you hang about you could easily get attacked by a predator." "Yeah." "Wind whips though here, doesn't it?" "We leave the collars to do their work." "In four days' time, we'll return to find out exactly what the herd gets up to when the boss cow's away." "It's been a long day and I'm off to bed, but for the cows, night is a time for chewing as well as sleeping." "Cows only sleep for around four hours out of every 24, in short bursts of a few minutes at a time." "Research has found that cows experience a type of sleep called REM, which in humans, is when we dream." "What they're dreaming about, no-one knows!" "There's been a major development with the cows and Jilly's just going to show me what's happened." "Oh, I can see, look." "Yep." "I know." "Look at that." "There we go." "It's Litchen." "Litchen's died." "Good lord." "Look at her." "What, just like that, overnight." "At 14 years old, Litchen was a pretty old cow." "But most cattle are slaughtered well before the end of their natural life." "So Litchen's death is a shock." "The vet believes Litchen died from a combination of old age, and a type of bacteria called Clostridia." "This comes from spores that exist in the soil on almost all farms." "It can kill a cow in as little as 12 hours." "It must be sort of...mixed emotions for you because you detested her, she detested you." "She chased you and you had to hide behind that gate, didn't you?" "She really disliked me and I disliked her and, she was the only cow in the whole herd that I've really felt threatened by." "Yeah, yeah." "And you sort of feel a bit guilty, having said and felt this way because she lived a long life here on the farm." "Four days have passed since we took the dominant cows, Poplin and Privet, out of the herd." "Our electronic collars have been recording what's happened ever since." "Now, if I read..." "First number is number 36." "Oh, it's Una." "Una. 14." "Udine." "Bit like bingo this, isn't it?" "Christina Umstatter and Marie Haskell are scientists from the Scottish Agricultural College." "They've come to help me analyse the data." "So all these little boxes on top should contain all the data of the animal's movements." "Yes, yes, that, that's captured all of the contacts between the animals." "So there's a bit of processing to do here and hopefully you'll be able to tell us later on that there might be some relationships going on, or not." "Yep." "That's what we hope, yes." "Plug it in and all the cows' secrets come running out." "Oh, yeah." "In a stable herd like this, we would expect that cows will spend most of their time with their calves and other closely-related females." "But has removing the two dominant cows changed this behaviour?" "Violet was a really interesting cow." "Right, yep, we know Violet." "Yes." "And she seems to be an incredible networker." "The cows tend to associate with their calves and then next on the list tends to be Violet, so she must spend a lot of time walking around, just getting to know all of the other cows." "Just interacting loads." "She's a busybody." "Absolutely, yeah." "The amount of time Violet dedicated to socialising is impressive." "The data revealed that, in four days, she spent 51 hours networking." "Double the average time of the other cows." "And she might have a motive." "We wonder whether that's how you become a dominant cow, just to kind of keep your network up." "Does that match up with Violet's temperament, how you know Violet?" "Well, no, this has actually surprised me." "Yes." "I didn't imagine that she would be quite such an it girl really." "It looks like Violet has taken advantage of Poplin and Privet's removal and made a bid for the top." "So we see that Violet's grooming is a key part of building her social network." "Cows recognise each other partly by smell and also by markings." "It's thought that that they can identify up to 70 other cows." "That's a lot of friends." "What about dear Rose?" "She's a cow we found on her own all her time." "Yes." "Now she's an interesting cow because, if you've noticed, that's what the data says as well." "Right." "She does seem to be on her own a bit and she comes into very few cow social networks and if she does it's very low down, low ranking, really." "Right." "I think that's her, there." "Now they're turning away from her." "Oh, my god, they don't want to know her, do they?" "Nobody likes Rose, do they?" "Well, it's not that they don't like her, but she isn't a cow that can... seem to get up and want to be synchronised with others." "And if you're not active, you're not going to build up your relationships, are you?" "No." "You won't go up that level." "Yes, that's true, yeah, it is." "If you want to be Violet, you have to be out there and networking." "It's like any friendship, you've got to work at friendships, haven't you?" "Well, that's right." "Phone people up occasionally." "You made me feel guilty now." "Evidence from the collars shows that each individual is different but that cows have a defined social structure and constantly organise themselves in the herd." "This is why farmers have found it easy to control them." "I'm really beginning to see cows as quite complex creatures and it's easy to see how they can express their natural behaviour on a farm like Jilly's." "But the problem I've got is, now knowing how complex these animals are, is that in really intensive systems, are they able to express their natural behaviours?" "They're desperate to get in there, aren't they?" "Martin Whell has 300 cows on his farm." "It's a modern commercial dairy farm, so it's a completely different set up from Jilly's." "Come on then, girls." "In you go now." "All the way." "This is domestication taken to the extreme." "The cows live on a completely unnatural schedule, being milked twice a day, every day." "A process which takes up to three hours." "How many have you put in?" "20." "Every aspect of their life is controlled to maximise milk production." "More than 90% of Britain's dairy cows are Holsteins like these." "Are you right-handed?" "I'm right-handed." "Yeah." "Get that in, tidy up your units." "Unlike many animals, cows don't need to see their calf to produce milk." "The cows here have become conditioned." "Just the sights and sounds of the machinery causes their milk to flow." "The anticipation, the milk starts pouring out." "Do you get that?" "Do you get these animals so excited they just want to be milked?" "If you left her there for another minute she'd be running, running a river underneath you." "That's actually hard to get that on." "Some mammals only feed on demand." "Cows suckle their calves just a few times a day." "They're naturally able to store their milk for several hours." "This is why they're such good animals for commercial milk production." "All right, lovely." "It's not staying on." "There you go, look, straight in." "She's already up to over a litre of milk gone out." "A litre of milk and she's been plugged in for a couple of seconds." "Yep." "Look at the veins on here." "And that's all the blood supply going to manufacture the milk." "And the main vein is right under their belly." "You can feel the heat off that." "Those veins are vital. 500 litres of blood have to pass through the udder to make one litre of milk." "Are we going to have a sweep stake to where she gets?" "38." "I'd better say less." "She ain't going to do 38, I'd say 25." "Can't we fix it?" "A single Holstein can produce 100,000 litres in her lifetime." "But there is a downside to all this intensive breeding." "Producing this level of milk puts a huge strain on the cow's metabolism." "The average productive life of a dairy cow is only three years, after which she'll be sent to the slaughterhouse." "Typically she'll only be good for mince." "Around half of the beef products we eat come from dairy cows." "Today, farmers like Martin are trying to breed a robust dairy cow that will have a longer and healthier life." "His cows are artificially inseminated so that he can modify the traits of his herd." "This is a process that happens all over the country, isn't it?" "Well, we can choose." "Why we're AI-ing and not using natural service, I can choose a different bull for this cow compared to it, just down there is a cross bred cow already." "So it allows you to chop and change rather than having, say, 15 different bulls of different breeds, you can just have the semen from a whole array of different bulls and then inseminate your cows as you wish." "That's right." "You know, I've got a portfolio of bulls that I'm using for my cows without running all those bulls." "It's a bit like blind date, you look through and sort of, the love pages to see who's best." "Well, that's what it comes down to." "I have got a catalogue as well, so..." "The use of all this AI has meant quite a change in the countryside." "Once dairy bulls were a common sight." "But now, like Martin, many farmers don't use one at all." "There are only a fraction of the number of dairy bulls in Britain compared to the 1950s." "We can laugh at the film, but with fewer bulls the countryside is a safer place." "We're on the horns of a dilemma." "We don't know whether to keep him or to kill him." "Jilly's favourite breeding bull, VB, is only six years old, but he's become persistently lame and is unable to do his job." "The average bull will normally work till he's 11 or 12, but VB can't earn his keep and Jilly knows she should get rid of him." "He will have to go to the abattoir, won't he?" "It's almost like betrayal, because the trust is here, he's very happy." "I'm trying to find a..." "Find a way that you can keep him." "I'm trying to find the arguments." "I know." "That actually justify keeping him because I don't want to see him go." "But it gets to the point where the arguments to keep him get fewer and fewer." "I'll try and make one up." "The bonds between human and animal can run deep." "But in domestication we make a pact." "To provide food and protection from predators, until the moment we're ready to become the predator ourselves." "It's hard." "Everyone goes though it." "I thought I could save him then." "I know." "That's the worst thing about it." "You go through it and you question yourself, but he's had his time, hasn't he?" "VB's final journey will be to a local abattoir, where he'll be slaughtered for beef." "Jilly know his carcass will earn up to £1,000." "You've made sure he's had a good life and now you're making sure that he's treated properly in the final part of it." "Well, he's not going very far and.." "and he's going to a good abattoir." "It'll all be done proper." "Yeah." "And that's also important, you know, there's no stress and you can see there he's not a stressed animal at all and that's good." "Shall we go and see the truck off?" "No, you can do that, I don't want to come." "You want to stay here." "I don't want to see that, thank you." "Poplin, Privet and Swift have had a week's training." "Today it's the final test to see if they've learned a completely unnatural task." "Pressing a doorbell to get food." "Right, Jilly, stabilisers off." "We've taken the tray away." "There's nothing else that can persuade the cows to push that except if they've actually learnt what it means." "Nervous?" "Yes, I am because, I mean, it's a bit of a test of your training, isn't it?" "Well, it is." "And the intelligence of the cows, you know?" "It's like an exam morning, isn't it?" "Yes, it is, yeah." "Turn your papers over." "Right I'll get in position and then you let 'em through." "Right." "It's quite exciting, this." "Hello, Swifty." "I don't want to move a lot because I don't want to stimulate the cow in any way." "The cow's got to do it all by herself." "First cow up is Swift." "She doesn't even want to come in the pen." "Is that Swift in the pen?" "Yep." "Got her there." "She's not altogether a happy bunny." "Cows are naturally cautious of new things, so to succeed Swift has to overcome her instinctive fear." "Now, you'd hope she would have walked over to the buzzer." "Some connection with the buzzer and food, but, no interest whatsoever." "Swift has failed to make the connection between pressing the bell and food." "Will Poplin do any better?" "So close." "She's thinking about it." "Come on, Popsy, you can do it." "Unfortunately, Poplin hasn't learned to make the connection either." "There's only one cow left." "Now I'm hoping Privet will get this." "She's bashing it." "She's going for it." "BELL RINGS" "Brilliant." "Look at that." "I got worried then because she was bashing it with her head and the bell wasn't buzzing, but she persisted." "She carried on." "Is she going to do it again?" "BELL RINGS" "Good girl!" "Jilly, that is incredible." "I know." "What an A student." "BELL RINGS" "Do you know what, she's actually getting cocky." "BELL RINGS" "Yep." "BELL RINGS" "OK, OK OK." "She's..." "BELL RINGS" "Right." "She pushed it three times there until I filled enough up that it was well worth her putting her head down." "Watch, I'll hold back and see how many times she rings it." "BELL RINGS" "No food yet." "One." "BELL RINGS SEVERAL TIMES" "Two, three, four." "If this cow ever gets out..." "BELL RINGS she'll be ringing doorbells up and down the high street waiting for food." "I'm actually going to run out of food now, look at that." "That's the last." "She's had the whole lot of this food, purely by pushing the doorbell and that shows you that this animal has really learnt the association of pushing the bell for reward." "And that shows intelligence." "BELL RINGS" "I'm out." "Sorry, love." "C'mon, c'mon, bucket's over there, c'mon, back you go." "We lump all cows together, but Privet's proved she's the brightest of the bunch." "She's licking her chops." "And I think she's doing that in front of the others on purpose." "Just going, "Mmmm, that was delicious."" "C'mon, girlies." "C'mon." "In you come." "C'mon now." "Privet proves that cows can learn to do a completely artificial task." "But they are also individual in their intelligence." "Right from the beginning, Jilly had a hunch Privet would do well, so it looks like her instincts, based on years of watching her cows, weren't far off the mark." "From my ten days on the farm I've learnt that cows have all the features necessary to live in harmony with humans." "Oh, yeah, look, bong, bong." "Another one there." "What's going on?" "Cows are tame, if they're handled the right way." "They live in easily controlled groups." "Just a tiny step in's all it took." "They can breed in captivity." "He's calling to them." "And they can learn to fit into a human environment." "Each of these features on their own isn't unusual." "But only a few of the world's animals have all of these qualities." "The result is one of the most successful partnerships on Earth." "You being here has actually completely opened my eyes in terms of what our cows can actually do." "Before I go, I'm off to see the cows one last time." "It's funny, you get to... know them without even looking at their tags." "Bye bye, Violet." "Are you saying goodbye to me, or is it the bucket you're saying goodbye to?" "We may think we're using the cows, but you could just as easily argue that the cows are using us." "They have adapted to our way of life and as a result they have spread round the world." "You going to walk me out." "Bye, Abby." "See you Una." "The domesticated cow is a unique and special animal." "They have put their lives in the hands of us humans." "And I think we have a duty to repay that trust." "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd" "Email subtitling@bbc.co.uk"