Cattle experience positive welfare states including curiosity, social play, and grazing satisfaction. Recognising and enabling these positive experiences is essential for truly good cattle welfare.
Cattle welfare science has moved beyond preventing suffering to understanding and enabling positive emotional states. Cattle show clear behavioural indicators of positive welfare: play behaviour on pasture release, curious investigation of novel objects, allogrooming sessions that indicate positive social relationships, and positive judgment bias in cognitive assessments. Providing pasture access is perhaps the single most impactful positive welfare intervention for dairy and beef cattle — the exuberant behaviour displayed on first pasture access demonstrates how strongly cattle are motivated for these experiences. Social stability, good human-animal relationships, and environments that allow exploration and choice all contribute to positive cattle welfare beyond the absence of suffering.