Scientists are always looking for the next, best thing.
And in their quest to determine how much air and environmental pollution farm animals contribute to the Earth each year, it can become necessary to teach those same farm animals how to do their business on demand.
Think of this along the lines of you you’d housebreak a dog, or teach a cat to use the toilet instead of a litter box — all animals can be taught to associate bathroom time with a specific action, method or command — the object with farm animals is that you’re dealing with the same on a much, much bigger scale.
Because according to some thoughtful Canadian researchers, they’ve determined the BEST WAY TO POTTY TRAIN a cow, as they wanted to capture the amount of waste a cow produces in a day. Rumor has it that cows urinate as much as nine times a day, and push things out the other end a whole lot more than that. Grass and grains, apparently, really are a high fiber, high carb diet.
So what did these researchers determine was the BEST WAY TO POTTY TRAIN a cow?
They determined that walking through a tub of water was the most likely trigger versus the other methods that they tried. But in conclusion, they said that none of their tests really stimulated the cows to do their business, but that cows tended to do it whenever they felt like it — or “exposed to novelty”, which sounds more or less the same thing.