In the Yamagata prefecture of Japan, farmers have begun painting their cattle with zebra-like stripes to repel blood-sucking insects like cattle flies and gadflies. This innovative approach has garnered attention and is showing promising results, as noted by the South China Morning Post.
The Japanese Black breed, known for its significant role in producing top-quality wagyu beef, has faced persistent challenges from blood-sucking insects like gadflies and cattle flies. These pests not only create discomfort and stress for the cattle but also have negative effects on their reproductive rates, causing worries among farmers.
“Productivity is crucial for livestock farmers, so I want the method to be of help not only in Aichi Prefecture, but also across Japan,” said Tomoki Kojima, a chief researcher at the cattle lab in the center’s Animal Husbandry Division.
via asahi
To tackle this issue, farmers have turned to painting zebra-like stripes on their cattle—a method that has been in practice for over three years in Yamagata prefecture. By using spray paint or mild bleach, farmers apply white stripes onto the black-colored cattle, imitating the look of zebras.
“Many farmers have hesitated to release their cattle on farmland because they feel sorry for the animals being targeted by gadflies,” an official of the prefecture’s agricultural promotion section told the Mainichi. “But we can now expect cattle to relax and grow healthily if we give them stripes.”
The outcomes have been encouraging, as painted cattle have shown fewer signs of stress in comparison to their unpainted counterparts. Scientists from the local prefecture have conducted observations in farmlands and identified notable behavioral distinctions between painted and unpainted cattle.
As CNET reports, the number of biting flies observed on the striped cows was impressively less than half the number seen on cows that were not painted.
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“We found that painting zebra-like stripes on cows can decrease the incidence of biting flies landing on individuals by 50%,” according to the study’s findings,” the study said.
Unpainted cattle often showed stress-related behaviors like tail flicking, head shaking, and hoove stamping up to 16 times a minute. In contrast, painted cattle exhibited these behaviors only five times a minute.
“This work provides an alternative to the use of conventional pesticides for mitigating biting fly attacks on livestock that improves animal welfare and human health, in addition to helping resolve the problem of pesticide resistance in the environment,” the study stated.
Scientific Insights
A few years ago, a research study consisting of six such cows was conducted by researchers at the Aichi Agricultural Research Center, Nagakute, in Aichi, Japan, and their results were published in the journal PLOS One. Even in the paper, the researchers report the phenomenon but did not conduct any experiments to determine what might be causing it.
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While the exact scientific reason why zebra-like stripes work against insects is still uncertain, scientists speculate that it may disrupt insects’ ability to sense motion accurately due to the polarization of light caused by the painted stripes. This confusion deters insects from landing on the cattle. Compared to traditional insecticidal methods, painting stripes is a low-cost solution that provides an alternative approach, reducing the risk of insect resistance over time.
The positive outcomes of this method have inspired farmers throughout the prefecture to follow suit. Scientists are actively spreading their discoveries among fellow farmers, highlighting how painting cattle with zebra-like stripes can significantly enhance their comfort and overall well-being.
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As more farmers adopt this approach, it showcases their creativity in tackling enduring problems in livestock care. Through simple yet powerful methods like painting stripes on cattle, farmers are not only improving the well-being of their herds but also promoting sustainability in the industry.
Painting the cattle, however, is a less expensive alternative that may have originated from using paints to mark animals externally for identification. Scientists discovered that painting stripes on the cattle causes light to polarize. This attracts insects to the animal, but it also confuses their ability to detect motion. As a result, insects struggle to slow down in time to land on the animal, effectively preventing bites.
