Could Hemp Help Cattle Relax?  K-State Research Says Yes.

Researchers at Kansas State University say hemp could be used as a stress reducer for cattle.

“We fed industrial hemp to a group of Holstein steers," said Kansas State University beef production medicine veterinarian, Dr. Mike Kleinhenz. "I want to stress that this was high cannabinoid industrial hemp, so we had a high amount of cannabinoids, specifically cannabidiolic acid, which is the precursor to CBD, so what you see in gummies and things like that, outside pharmacies all over the place. It is a similar compound to that, we fed to these cattle.”

Kleinhenz said they put accelerometers on the calves to monitor the amount of activity each animal had during the day to see if there was any impacts on stress.

“When we looked at their activity throughout the day, our industrial hemp calves spent a lot more time lying. And so, that kind of shows us they're a little bit less stressful, and it was a complete inversion. So, our groups, we monitored about four days before we actually started feeding hemp and our hemp calves actually spent less time lying, had a little bit more activity. And as soon as we started feeding hemp, they started laying down a little bit more. And that was also supported by our cortisol results. So, cortisol is a stress hormone, and our hemp fed calves had lower stress cortisol throughout the whole study, so we felt pretty comfortable that we had a nice stress reduction there.”

He said it looks like there is a future for using hemp to reduce cattle stress.

“By the looks of it I think this very much does have a future and especially if we can get hemp seed meal through the AAFCO/FDA process, that's one avenue that we can open the doors and lower the barriers to get a lot of these into the system. And it does have quite a bit of potential, when we look this has a really nice nutrient profile, 20% crude protein, looks to be digestible and things like that, so there's a use for it, we just have to figure out where that use is.”

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