Head Cow

There is pasture land along the road from our house to 'town' and there are a couple of herds of cows occupying them at various times. Today, one herd - all black and white cows and please don't expect me to know what kind of cow that is - had obviously been led by a single cow from one section to another. You could see that the herd was just starting to fan out from their single-file line into the new area even while the last of them were scrambling through the gate, running to keep up.

Totally uninformed as I am about farm animal behavior, I have nevertheless watched cows for years and know that there is a 'Head' cow in the herd that the others will follow to new pasture or back to the barn. And I've always wondered how that comes about.

Are there natural leaders that emerge in a herd of cows? Does one cow have to be trained to move first, and the rest just naturally follow any such initiative? Obviously, in all my spare time here, I had to research this burning question:

• How is leadership determined in grazing herbivores?

Turns out they don’t really know, and haven’t studied it much (though I can’t imagine why.) It isn’t really just one cow that is the leader after all – but one study showed that 48% of the time in a specific herd it WAS one specific cow who was the ‘head cow.’ Mostly. 'Nomination' doesn’t seem to be based on size, although age seems to be a factor, and it is the herd, not the farmer, who determines 'head cow' status. Bullying cows don’t necessarily rise to the top, so to speak, but smart ones do. The head cow has to know where the best food is – and be confident about it besides, evidently.

Sort of like how our own culture’s leaders emerge, right? Or not. Perhaps WE haven’t studied this enough either.