“Cattle, like many other animals or pets, are quite smart and can learn a lot.

Why should they not be able to learn to use the toilet? ”

It writes the researcher Jan Langbein who together with his colleagues at the Research Institute for Farm Animal Biology has taught calves to use a urinal in a stable.

The purpose is to collect and handle the animals' waste to reduce the ammonia emissions that are formed during evaporation.

The study, which was published in Current Biology, involved 16 calves that were trained to be room clean in three stages.

A total of 11 of them managed to learn to use the "toilet" when they needed to urinate.

Play the video to see how the training went.  

A classic method

Training animals to a desired behavior with the help of positive reinforcement is common in ethological research.

The reason is simple: animals would not do anything that is not to their advantage. 

- If the cow makes a mistake, it gets water and when it urinates, it gets a reward.

With the same reinforcement method, we have taught dairy cows to go to a machine to be milked, says Per Peetz Nielsen, ethologist and researcher in sustainable food production at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. 

Indirect greenhouse gas

Agriculture is the largest source of world ammonia emissions, of which livestock farming accounts for more than half of the share. 

In a poorly ventilated stable, the ammonia stays in the air and is dangerous to breathe in for the livestock and for the people who work in the building.

If it is released into the wild, it instead causes acidification and eutrophication in soil and watercourses. 

In addition, ammonia is converted to nitrous oxide when it is broken down by the earth's microbes.

It is one of the greenhouse gases that humans emit the most, along with methane and carbon dioxide. 

Points to a bigger challenge

Training calves in this way requires equipment and knowledge that ordinary livestock owners do not normally have.

Therefore, Per Peetz Nielsen is unsure of how applicable potty training for reduced ammonia emissions is in practice. 

- It is a very fun study that focuses on the problem of ammonia emissions from livestock.

But there are other proven methods that can be streamlined instead.

One way is to quickly pump up the feces directly from the barn gutters and wells.

Then sulfuric acid is added.

Then the waste is acidified and the ammonia emission is significantly reduced.

Do not miss anything about the climate!

Receive SVT's newsletter in your inbox every week.