Preventing Undue Stress During Livestock Handling

This article was first published in the Lancaster Farmer

Increased animal stress can decrease productivity in multiple areas of a production cycle. Areas such as reproduction, health, and growth can be severely affected by periods of stress. Animal handling can be a significant stressor to many food animals, but it is unavoidable within the production cycle. However, understanding the basics of animal behavior can help reduce the stress that can accompany animal handling.

Understanding animal behavior is as simple as recognizing how their five senses differ from ours and how that affects their perception of the world. Most research in this area has been conducted by Dr. Temple Grandin. Her work, outlined in the book "Humane Livestock Handling" and published paper "Behavioral Principles of Livestock Handling," is the basis for this article.

Hearing

Grazing animals, such as cattle, sheep, and goats, have very sensitive hearing and use that to help them understand the world. They recognize the differences in tone and pitch and understand the meanings of various sounds. For example, cattle can distinguish between a human yelling at them and a gate slamming. They can also form positive and negative associations with those types of sounds. The best example is the feed bucket; everyone knows that one shake of the bucket causes all the animals to come running!

When working with animals, keeping the noise level down is imperative to ensure safe and efficient handling. The easiest way to keep the noise down is not to shout, yell, or slam gates. Research by Dr. Wayner and Dr. Stookey from the Western College of Veterinary Medicine saw a significant increase in heart rate and movement in heifers exposed to sounds of people yelling and slamming gates. Correcting these types of handler behavior can help with calmer movements and better animal behavior, without costing the producer a dime.

Smell

The sense of smell is not the most dominant sense when it comes to animal behavior. However, that does not mean it cannot affect the animal handling process. Like hearing, animals can have positive and negative associations with smell. This is mainly due to the presence of pheromones in urine. Research conducted by Alain Boissy, Claudia Terlouw, and Pierre Le Neindre has shown that cattle are more averse to objects and places marked by the urine of a stressed cow. For example, if the handling stresses a steer in a chute system, the other cattle behind him could react negatively to the smell in his urine. Ensuring your handling system and housing environments are low-stress can decrease the prevalence of these pheromones.

Touch and taste

Our next two senses are like smell, as animals also form positive and negative associations with touch and taste! Touch can be a significant part of animal handling; however, it is essential to ensure that workers use proper techniques. Hitting, smacking, and other aggressive forms of touch will be remembered by that animal. Why is that important? If that animal remembers being struck through the chute, it is less likely to move through it more quickly and efficiently the second time. A calming touch would mimic the mother animal licking her offspring. An animal's sense of taste is similar to that of humans, as we can form both negative and positive relationships with different foods. One of the better examples of this is molasses. Most livestock prefer a sweet taste, so molasses is often added to their feed to make it more palatable.

Slight

Sight is the number one sense that grazing animals use. Understanding how these animals view the world can help tremendously when moving or working with them throughout the production cycle. These animals have nearly 360° vision, minus a small blind spot directly behind their rear. Since they are grazers, they use this type of vision to continuously scan the area for predators while they have their head down eating. According to Temple Grandin's "Behavior Principles of Livestock Handling", cattle and swine have a field of vision of 300°, and sheep have a field of vision of 191 to 306°, depending on wool blindness. Understanding their field of vision can help people learn how to properly and safely move around animals. When working with grazing animals, you must remember that they are prey animals, meaning they are constantly on the lookout for potential danger. They are also susceptible to rabid motion, which helps them to seek out danger.

Understanding animal behavior can help handlers know why livestock act a certain way. When you understand the underlying reason behind a specific behavior, it becomes much easier to correct it. Many of these corrections can be done with little to no cost to the producer, and lowering the stress level of animal handling can pay them back tenfold.

Resources

Grandin, T., 2018. Behavioral principles of livestock handling. American Registry of Professional Animal Scientists:1-11.

Waynert, D.F., J.M. Stookey, K.S. Schwartzkopf-Genswein, J.M. Watts, C.S. Waltz., 1999, The response of beef cattle to noise during handling. Appl Anim Behav Sci. Vol. 62 Issue 1:27-42. doi:10.1016/S0168-1591

Boissy, A.A., Terlouw, C.B., Le Neindre, P.A, 1998, Presence of cues from stressed conspecifics increases reactivity to aversive events in cattle: evidence for the existence of alarm substances in urine. Physiol. Behav. Vol. 63 Issue4:489-495. doi:10.1016/S0031-9384