Rethinking resilience in dairy cattle: Farmer perceptions of a multisystemic concept

For sustainable food production, it is necessary to build resilience in livestock to be able to adapt or respond to multiple challenges. Farmers have not been involved in the development of resilience indicators for dairy cattle. The aim of this study was to understand how farmers conceptualise resilience in dairy cows. Twenty farmers from the UK and Channel Islands were interviewed and the data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Four themes were generated from the analysis: "Fitting the system", "An invisible cow", "A Will to Live", and "She holds her own". Farmers conceptualised a resilient cow as one that requires little to no individual intervention. The farmers' overall goal for their cows was to be healthy, fertile and have a stable milk yield, reflecting the purpose of resilience in cows. Farmers perceived that cows enact resilience through their motivation to survive and thrive. Farmers also observed that cows enact resilience through "holding their own", a process where cows maintained their position over resources such as feed and lying space despite potential social challenge, by being assertive but not aggressive. Furthermore, farmers recognised that resilience in a cow was distributed across different systems, such as herd, housing environment, feeding, and farmer. Whilst resilience is often considered an individual trait in animal science, we conceptualise it as complex and dynamic process by which cows navigate and negotiate resources that sustain their health, fertility, and productivity. Resources are multisystemic and can reside at individual, social, and environmental levels. We suggest adopting a systems approach to understanding resilience in cows.