Situation in Germany

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In Germany, around 11 percent of "dairy cows" and 9 percent of other cattle live in tie-stall housing. This corresponds to a total of approximately 1.1 million animals. 52 percent of the farms with tie-stall housing keep the cattle in the so-called combination husbandry. In this, the animals have the opportunity to walk freely from time to time. The other 48 percent of farms keep cattle tethered all year round (3). Particularly high proportions of all-year tethering are found in the states of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg (4).

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Problems of tie-stall housing

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According to animal welfare scientist David Fraser, three aspects must be considered to evaluate an animal's welfare (5):  

- The physical health

- The ability to lead an approximately "nature-like" life and to exhibit the appropriate behaviors

- The affective states of the animal

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An evaluation of tie-stall housing with this scheme shows that tethering is associated with numerous physical problems, severe behavioral restrictions, and frequent stereotypies. Consequently, the welfare of the animals is severely reduced.

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Overview of physical problems in tie-stall housing

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Tethering severely restricts the animals' freedom of movement and behavior and causes physical problems. The following diseases and injuries are described in particular frequency (6):

- Diseases of the respiratory system

- Udder diseases

- Leg and claw problems (7)

- Diseases of the digestive system (8)

- Skin injuries

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Respiratory diseases

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Respiratory diseases, primarily due to high ammonia concentrations, are a common problem in tie-stall housing. Ammonia is produced when the excrement of cattle is decomposed. The noxious gas irritates the lung epithelium. The number of ciliated cells in it, which are responsible for the removal of mucus, small foreign bodies and microorganisms, decreases. This leads to increased respiratory diseases, such as bovine influenza (9).

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Udder diseases

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Udder infections, so-called mastitis, have a considerable influence on the well-being of the animals. The infectious disease occurs more frequently in tie-stall housing than in loose housing (10). When cattle are converted from tie-stalls to loose housing, the incidence of mastitis is reduced (11).

In addition to infectious udder diseases, traumatic udder injuries, that is, injuries caused by external force, also occur frequently. This happens mainly in tethering pens that are too narrow due to kicking by the neighboring animal or in tethering pens that are too short due to the udder resting on the edges of the tethering pen (12), (13).

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Leg and claw problems

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Leg and claw diseases are a major problem in cattle farming (14). Particularly in tie-stall housing, claw abrasion is often insufficient due to the lack of exercise. If, in addition, hoof care is neglected or poorly performed by the farmer, the hoof walls and tips become elongated, resulting in mechanical overload and malpositioning. These so-called stable claws lead to serious claw and joint diseases (15).  

The following table gives an overview of the most common claw problems and resulting lameness (16), (17):

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Pathological changes in the carpal joint

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Cattle graze on pasture in a walking position. This results in the body being somewhat lowered and the animals can easily grab and tear off the grass with their tongues. In tie stalls, especially in the short pens, the feedlot often prevents cattle from standing in a walking position; instead, they must stand with their legs parallel in front of the crib.

In this posture, however, they cannot reach the level of the floor with their head and therefore cannot eat the crib empty if it is installed low. In order to reach all the food, the animals lean against the crib with the carpal joint. If this happens over a longer period of time, thickening and pathological changes occur in the carpal joint (18).

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Conclusion tethering and physical health

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Animal health is an important criterion in evaluating whether a housing system meets the needs of the animal. The health problems described show that tethering is not a suitable housing system for cattle: It causes diseases and injuries that have a negative impact on animal welfare.

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Restrictions in behavior  

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Since tie-stall housing forcibly combines all functional areas in one place, cattle cannot follow their species-specific behavior of separating their resting and feeding places (19). The severely restricted freedom of movement makes contact with conspecifics virtually impossible and unreasonably restricts species-typical behavior.

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Social behavior

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Cattle live in small groups of 20 to 30 animals under (semi-)natural conditions (20). They establish a social hierarchy and develop individual friendships, which they maintain through various expressive behaviors (21). They cannot establish or maintain these contacts in tethered conditions because it is difficult for the cattle to interact with each other. Tethered, for example, they cannot lick each other. This deprives the animals of an interaction that is essential for them (22).

Cattle vary their physical distance from each other considerably. The distance depends on the rank of the animals, their relationship to each other, individual preferences, and the activity being performed. In some situations, the chosen distance can be up to five meters. In tethered situations, cattle cannot choose their distance from each other (23).

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Locomotion

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Walking is an internal need of cattle. They walk even when not driven by hunger, weather, danger, or other external influences (24). In the pasture, they cover between one and thirteen kilometers a day (25). This is not possible in tethered housing. There, they can only take one step back and forth, neither turning in circles nor walking or running (26).

In addition to meeting an inner need, exercise is good for the animals' health, especially their legs and claws (27). Furthermore, exercise strengthens their joints, tendons and ligaments (28).

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Reproduction

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Animal husbandry in agriculture is always strongly restricting reproductive behavior. The keeper regulates it due to economic considerations.

Also in tie-stall housing, the reproductive behavior and the important mother-child behavior of cattle is strongly restricted. The lack of calving pens ist often a problem (29). These are extremely important because the cow wants to withdraw from the herd to calve. If, on the other hand, the cow has to give birth to her calf in a tethered stall, this causes enormous stress for both of them (30).

The separation of the calf and the mother shortly after birth represents considerable stress for both individuals.

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Comfort and self-body care

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Licking, scratching and scrubbing movements performed with the tongue, horns and claws are essential for proper body grooming. To reach distant body parts, they swing their heads far back. The tether prevents this movement.

The rest of their body care, such as licking themselves, is also severely restricted. The animals also do not have access to rubbing opportunities such as brushes, trees and shrubs (31), (32).

Cows that have no opportunity to scratch themselves often start throwing food. There is no other way for them to satisfy itching impulses (33), (34). If this condition persists, it can develop into stereotypy, which indicates not only a lack of scratching opportunities, but also frustration in general (35).

Because tethered cattle cannot divide their environment into functional areas, they are forced to stand in their own excrement. This severely limits their comfort. In addition, it is not possible for them to go to a place in the barn that has a comfortable temperature for them (36).

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Rest and sleep

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Getting up and lying down

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Cattle get up and lie down several times a day. The process follows a specific pattern. To understand why tethering has a negative effect on the animals, it helps to know the typical sequence.

In the typical cattle lying down, they first go into the so-called carpal position by bending their front legs. They triple a little with their hind legs and then lie down quickly, coming to rest somewhat on their side. When standing up, the cattle gain momentum by rocking forward upward to get onto the hind legs, and thus into carpal position. Only then are the front legs set up.

In tie-stall housing, the animals can often perform the typical movements of the species only with difficulty or not at all due to insufficient space, an unsuitable floor or poor structuring of the stall. This leads to altered movement patterns, slower lying down and standing up and interrupted lying down processes. These altered behavior patterns have negative effects on the body and physiological processes, such as digestion (37).

One study found that lying down in cattle takes about nine seconds from the first visible intention to lying down when they have enough space and a soft surface. In tethered cows, they observed that this process can take up to 59 minutes (38). When cows have trouble lying down, they lie down less often (39) and stay down longer (40).

One study looked at the space a cow needs when lying down. Their findings were that the space should be at least 180 percent of the width of the hip in width and at least 300 percent of the length of the back in length to allow cows to lie down without interference. This goes far beyond the usual pen dimensions in tie-stall housing (41).  

Lying

Resting is considered an important indicator of the well-being of cattle, as they show a very high motivation for it and release increased stress hormones when prevented from doing so(42), (43). Cattle rest seven to fifteen hours per day, four hours of which are spent sleeping and a large part of which is spent on digestion (44).

Tethering severely restricts undisturbed rest. Not only boxes that are too short, but also dimensions that are too narrow pose a problem because the animals cannot lie down at the same time. Individual cattle cannot lie down for hours (45). As a result, they cannot perform the behavior that is otherwise synchronized in the herd (46).

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Exploring

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In tie-stall housing, there is nothing to explore given the fixation and few, monotonous environmental stimuli (47), (48). Research indicates that certain behavioral problems, such as food throwing, occur more frequently in low-stimulus environments than in housing environments with varied environmental stimuli (49).

An invention coming out of Russia aims to remedy this problem: Virtual reality goggles placed on the cattle make them believe they are in a meadow and not in a tethered barn (50), (51). This development must be viewed extremely critically. As so often in modern agriculture, the animal is adapted to the husbandry system and not the husbandry system to the animal. Glasses do not replace pasture and should therefore not be a justification for keeping an animal in a tethered stall.

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Food intake

The advantage of tethering over loose housing is that each animal has its own feeding place and access to a drinking trough, so there are no fights for resources (52), (53). However, both the feed and the water cannot be consumed in the species specific manner.

Cattle graze while walking slowly. Therefore, the front legs are positioned offset to each other in the so-called grazing stride. In this position, the animals' heads are somewhat lower than when they have to stand with both feet side by side. This makes it possible for the animals to reach grasses close to the ground with their mouths (54).  In addition to the unnatural position, which does not allow the head to bend all the way down, the trough in tethered pens is often even lower than the level of where the cows are standing (55).

Under near-natural conditions, such as pasture-based management, cattle spend eight to twelve hours a day grazing. Feed intake time is drastically reduced to four to seven hours per day in the barn (56).

Species-specific water intake is not possible due to bowl or tongue watering (57).  Normally, ingestion occurs by lightly dipping the mouth from above into an open water surface and then sucking the water into the oral cavity (58).

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Emotions

Negative emotions, such as frustration or boredom, often show up in the form of stereotypies. In cows, this can be the throwing of feed already mentioned above or rolling with the tongue. In the latter, the affected animals perform with an opened mouth rolling or meandering movements with the extended tongue. Over time, this causes air to be swallowed and food intake to be neglected. As a result, the animals become lean and more air accumulates in the rumen (59).

Because positive emotions are difficult to capture, there is little research on them, even though they are an important component of animal well-being (60).

Calves show positive emotions while playing, among other things (61). Adult cattle naturally perform less play behavior, so other indicators must be used to study emotions. In a study investigating emotions in cattle, the authors found that the ratio of the white eye area to the total eye area reflects the emotional state of the animal. The more white is seen, the more frustrated the cow is likely to be and vice versa. The less white, the more satisfied the animal. This is likely to be due to activity of the nervous system. When it is active, the muscle responsible for lifting the upper eyelid is activated (62). In addition to the amount of white in the eyes, the position of the ears has also been identified as an indicator of the emotional state of a cow (63).

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According to these indicators, daily access to a pasture has a positive effect on a cow's emotions. The animals appear relaxed there, with their eyes half closed and their ears hanging loosely back or down. Furthermore, the authors found that a tethered barn is not a relaxing environment for cows (64).

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Take away

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Tethering, whether year-round or seasonal, is an animal welfare issue. It brings significant problems on three levels - physical health, behavior and emotions.

Physical health is most disturbed in the respiratory system, legs and udder. Behavior is significantly impaired in all functional circuits and thus cannot be acted out in a manner typical of the species or specific to the individual. At the emotional level, tethered cattle experience mainly negative emotions, which are often so intense or prolonged that they lead to stereotypies. The experience of positive emotions is not encouraged in this environment.

Tethering is certainly the most adverse of the types of housing commonly used in Europe. Nevertheless, similar or different problems occur in the other forms of husbandry. Only freedom is appropriate for the species.

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Political development

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You can find out more about the political developments surrounding the ban on tethering in Germany, Austria and Switzerland in our chronologies.