The Social Lives of Cows

Pecking Orders Aren’t Just for Chickens

	In This Feature
		Fascinating Facts
		Cow Know-How
		The Social Lives of Cows
		Gentle Giants
		How You Can Help Cows

A herd of cows is very much like a pack of wolves, with alpha animals and complex social dynamics. Each cow can recognize more than 100 members of the herd, and social relationships are very important to them.¹³ Cows will consistently choose leaders for their intelligence, inquisitiveness, confidence, experience, and good social skills, while bullying, selfishness, size, and strength are not recognized as suitable leadership qualities.¹⁴ Cows form close friendships with some members of their herd—the relationships between mothers and daughters are especially strong, and calves bond with others in their peer group.¹⁵

Researchers at Bristol University in the United Kingdom found that cows have best friends and cliques, just like human beings do, and that animals groom and lick one another to demonstrate this affection.¹⁶ The longer partners know each other, the longer they groom each other.¹⁷ Also like humans, cows may carefully avoid others in their herd after they’ve had a falling out.

The social relationships between cows influence many parts of their daily lives. For example, when the herd settles down for a nap, each cow’s position and the order in which they lie down is directly related to their status in the herd.¹⁸

Raising cows in unnatural conditions, such as crowded feedlots, is very stressful to them because it upsets their hierarchy. University of Saskatchewan researcher Jon Watts notes that cows who are kept in groups of more than 200 on commercial feedlots get stressed and constantly fight for dominance (feedlots in America hold thousands of cows at a time). He says that this occurs because the cows are taken from their mothers too early, deprived of adequate space, and can’t find their niche within such large groups.¹⁹

This is akin to how humans would feel if we were penned in a tiny space with thousands of unfamiliar people. Just like us, cows like to be near their families and friends, and the stress of life on factory farms makes them feel confused, scared, and alone.

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