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Using isotopic signatures from animal tissue, it is possible to recover certain information about the environment of the animal –notably the diet at the time the hair was laid down. In the case of tail switch hair of cattle, a single hair may often represent an archive of information spanning a year or more in time. Isotopic analysis by mass spectrometry is now becoming cheap enough to be considered accessible for routine diagnostic or scientific investigation. The ratios of carbon (C):carbon and nitrogen (N):nitrogen are ideal for such investigation, since C and N are constituents of all animal proteins. This paper explains the theory of isotopic analysis in layman’s terms, and reports an experiment in which tail switch hair of 9 cattle from three Northland dairy farms was analysed in a ‘proof of concept’ study, to demonstrate the information-retrieval potential offered by isotopic analysis. Changes in isotopic abundance are measured in parts per thousand (δ, ‰). When matching signatures on replicate hairs, the average distance from the ‘interpolation’ line was ± 0.13‰ for δC, and ± 0.11‰ for δN. In contrast to this, differences in δC between different hair segments analysed exceeded 11‰, while between farm differences in δN exceeded 2.0‰. We suggest possible reasons for these differences in isotopic signature.

Isotopic composition of cow tail switch hair as an information archive of the animal environment