At this year's Festival of Science - 60 Years of the Volkswagen Foundation in Hannover, scientists from the Research Institute for Farm Animal Biology in Dummerstorf (FBN) and the Friedrich Loeffler Institute (FLI), Federal Research Institute for Animal Health-Celle were invited as one of three teams to present their cooperative project „Smart cattle to solve the climate-killer conflict" funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.
A behavioral approach was used to investigate whether the cognitive abilities of cattle can be used to resolve the conflict between requirements for high animal welfare and the avoidance of environmentally harmful ammonia emissions. The former PhD student at FBN and current agricultural advisor Neele Dirksen as well as Dr. Jan Langbein (FBN) and Prof. Lars Schrader (FLI) will use a model to demonstrate how calves were successfully trained to use a toilet to collect the animals' urine separately from their feces.
