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Low-flying helicopters cause only limited stress in dairy goats
Goats do not experience significant stress from a flying helicopter according to the Dutch National Aerospace Laboratory (NLR).
According to the NLR, Goats experience a brief startle response when a helicopter flies low overhead. Heart rate and the production of stress hormones do not change. The experiments were carried out Wageningen University and Research Center (Wageningen UR) and the NLR on behalf of the Netherlands Ministry of Defense.
The Ministry of Defense asked the NLR and WUR to investigate the possible effects of low-flying helicopters on the milk of goats, and whether it would have a detrimental effect on milk production. Then the Department would have examined how nuisance or damage by low-flying helicopters may be restricted. The Defence Department asked the NLR for its knowledge and experience in helicopter operations and helicopter noise and the BioMedical Research of the Animal Sciences Group of WUR because their experience of stress research in animals.
An extensive literature search yielded no support for the assumption that low-flying helicopters result in a lower milk yield. The experiment tested goats under controlled conditions at a test farm and extracted reliable measurements.
The experiments saw non-dairy goats in a barn being exposed to optical stimuli (images), acoustic stimuli (noises) related to helicopters. While goats outside a barn were buzzed by a CH-47D Chinook flown over at 75 and 50 metres above the ground.
It is known that strong and prolonged stress the health of mammals and may affect milk production. For this reason, the heart rate, concentration of the stress hormone cortisol in saliva - a measure of stress - and the movement of the goat was measured.
To the surprise of researchers, the results showed that the goats showed no strong stress reactions during or after exposure to the sights and sounds of a flying helicopter. The flying Chinook helicopter triggered only very briefly, a startle response in the goat, but heart rate and cortisol concentrations remained unchanged.
Based on these results, the conclusion that it is unlikely that flying helicopters have a detrimental effect on the milk of goats.
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