Mooving Cows with ease

MADISON, Wis. — Before stepping foot in the barn, new employees at Rosy-Lane Holsteins LLC are tasked with playing a video game as part of their training process. The game downloaded on their cell phone is designed to teach the basics of cow handling through an interactive format.

“Most populations know what a phone is, they know how to play on a phone, they’re distracted by a phone, so let’s give them a tool on their phone to train and do something worthwhile for the dairy,” said Jordan Matthews, a partner at Rosy-Lane Holsteins.

At the fifth annual Dairy Summit held by the Dairy Innovation Hub Nov. 20 on the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus, Matthews and Jennifer Van Os, assistant professor and extension specialist with the department of animal and dairy sciences, talked about the development of Mooving Cows, an educational video game for helping farm workers improve animal handling skills.

The product is a result of collaboration between the dairy industry and the university. Van Os and her team created the game with input from Matthews and other dairy farmers.

Rosy-Lane Holsteins is a multi-family-owned farm milking 850 cows near Watertown. In addition, they milk 700 cows at a satellite facility near Paoli. Rosy-Lane Holsteins has 30 full-time employees between the two sites, including 23 from Mexico, Nicaragua and Guatemala.

“They are Spanish-speaking and have a lot of different dialects,” Matthews said.

Matthews is fluent in Spanish and a total of three people on the management team are bilingual.

“We feel it’s pretty important to speak in their language,” he said.

Previously, training techniques on their farm included watching a video before going into the barn to interact with cows.

“We realized quickly that someone might have been sleeping during that video, and we need to try something different,” Matthews said. “In the video game, you quickly see if a team member understands the concept.”

Mooving Cows is a simulation experience allowing players to operate in various scenarios throughout a dairy farm. Players practice moving cows around by using their body language.

Throughout the game, players learn about cow behavior and practice cow-handling skills that keep animals calm and people safe. The game contains eight levels, and Van Os said it takes an average of 30 minutes to complete.

The first four levels take place in a pasture paddock, where basic cow moving principles are practiced in an open space. Here, players learn about flight zone and point of balance to recognize different types of cow behavior. The next two levels occur in a double parallel milking parlor in which the player loads both sides of the parlor. The final two levels are conducted in a freestall pen. Once all levels are completed, the player earns a certificate of completion.

Mooving Cows can be played in English and Spanish and is approved by the National Dairy Farmers Assuring Responsible Management Program for continuing education on stockmanship. Version 1.1 was released January 2024 and has 14,000 downloads in more than 100 countries. The game is completely free with no ads and can be downloaded for Apple and Android mobile devices from Apple and Google Play app stores.

In conversations with Matthews and other partners at Rosy-Lane Holsteins, Van Os gained insights into cow-handling expectations for employees. She wanted to know how employees were trained and what could be a better way to train people, especially given language barriers and time constraints.

“That’s how the idea for Mooving Cows was born,” Van Os said. “Working with people from real dairy farms to develop the game was the key.”

Matthews said safety is taken seriously at Rosy-Lane Holsteins.

“We’re dealing with animals that can be up to 2,000 pounds, and most of our team members are 120-150 pounds, so if there’s a bad interaction, it can go south very fast,” he said. “Cows are unpredictable, and they win the fight usually, so it’s important that people understand how cows can move and how to predict their behavior.”

Van Os said the video game is a safe place to learn from mistakes.

“We make people deliberately do things they shouldn’t, so they learn those consequences,” she said. “The game allows them to practice things you can’t practice in real life.”

Matthews said learning certain types of cow handling is important for the cows as well.

“The less stress we can put on her on a daily, hourly, down-to-the-minute basis, the more productive that animal is,” he said. “Everything we do is done to try to take stress off that cow.”

The university partnered with Filament Games to create Mooving Cows. After making a prototype, Van Os and her team invited Matthews and other dairy farmers to campus along with professional bilingual trainers and veterinarians to play the game and provide input.

“The product wasn’t perfect, so we gave some good comments,” Matthews said. “We were excited that (Jennifer) listened to our concerns, and once we saw the final product, we could tell a lot of those were taken into account.”

Version 1.0 was not released to the public because Van Os and her team wanted to refine the game and returned to several farms to assess people’s knowledge change, both before and after playing it.

“It’s important that we, as farmers, continue to integrate with the university to develop some of these things,” Matthews said. “When we bounce ideas back and forth, we get a unique and quality end product.”

When Mooving Cows was released, all staff at Rosy-Lane Holsteins downloaded the game and began playing it. The game created competitions in the barn, which Matthews said was fun.

“People would play it again to try to beat their friend’s score,” he said. “The game got our team members excited about training.”

Matthews said some of the people they onboard have zero experience with cattle, and some have never even seen a cow before.

“The game might get the lightbulb to click a little faster because rarely do people get it on the first time,” he said. “But maybe they’ll get it on the third time instead of the fifth time. It’s getting the basics in there sooner and getting the brain thinking a little more than just watching a video. We think this is a superior tool.”