By MEGGIE I. FOSTER
Assistant Editor

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — While it’s easy to get frustrated when handling an animal that won’t move forward, yelling and screaming is never going to result in a positive outcome, according to Temple Grandin, recognized as one of the nation’s foremost experts in animal welfare and handling.

During the Indiana Cattle and Forage Symposium on Feb. 27-28, Grandin, of Colorado State University, shared insight from her many years of research in animal handling and welfare with an audience of Hoosier livestock producers.

“One of the most important things to moving is to have a calm animal,” she said. “Animals react poorly to yelling and screaming. A key goal to good stockmanship is paying attention to the details.”
Grandin said it’s about making little changes such as removing the loose chain hanging down in a walkway that tends to scare animals. “It’s the little changes I’ve been talking about that people don’t seem to get,” she said. “Animals will show you what they’re scared of – what interferes with handling.”

According to Grandin, one of the biggest hindrances in moving animals is slippery floors, too much light or shadows, open sides in a chute and jerky movements.

Suggestions for improvements include skylights installed in the walls to improve cattle movement into an existing dark building, solid fences instead of an open-sided chute and a “curved system instead of a straight one because animals will turn back in the same direction they came from in most cases,” she said.
One thing Grandin hopes producers can learn to understand is an animal’s flight zone.

“The flight zone is the animal’s safety zone,” she said. “Calm animals will have a small flight zone and tame animals will have no flight zone. Show animals have no flight zone, at least we hope so.”

In trying to move an animal effectively without yelling or using an electric prodder, Grandin said to use a stick with a streamer, a paddle stick or a flag on a stick to turn the animal by blocking the animal’s vision on one side.

It seemed one of Grandin’s biggest pet peeves is the use of a hot shot to move or scare animals into moving.

“Don’t use a hot shot, it should never be in your hand,” she said. “If you feel like you need to use it, pick it up and use it once, then get it out of your hand, period.”

Grandin said the key behavioral principles of restraint is non-slip flooring that helps prevent the fear of falling, no sudden jerky motion and using optimal pressure in a cattle chute - not too tight, not too loose.

“Cattle that become agitated in the squeeze chute have lower weight gains and cattle that run fast out of the squeeze chute more often perform poorly,” she explained.

Grandin encouraged producers to perform regular audits of on-farm animal handling practices with an objective numerical scoring system.

“It prevents bad from becoming normal,” she said. “How do we keep what we do good. Measure body condition, lameness and amount of vocalizations.”

What would our wedding guests say if they came to our farm and walked through our facility – there shouldn’t be anything you need to hide.”

Critical points to monitor include the percentage of animals stunned correctly on the first attempt, percentage of animals rendered insensible, percentage of animals prodded, with an electric prod, percentage of animals that vocalize and the percentage of animals that slip or fall.

In monitoring those points, Grandin encourages producers to set limits high enough for the industry to pass.

“How about using the scoring as a troubleshooting tool in do I have a facility problem or a people problem?” she asked.

Major variables where poor performance should be a failed audit include a poor body condition score, lameness, dirty animals, injuries, sores, swellings, poor coat condition, high ammonia levels and abnormal behaviors such as tongue rolling and bar biting.
“Lameness is a good example of a major critical control point where many different problems can contribute such as poor leg conformation, rough concrete, improper hoof trimming, nutritional mistakes, rough handling, growing heifers too rapidly and poorly designed stalls,” said Grandin.

In closing, Grandin said “one thing we need to do is we need to start showing what we do because if we don’t it will ultimately, gigantically backfire on us.”