Pleasant, Practical Processing
Practical tips for improving cattle welfare during processing.
As part of the 4th International Symposium on Beef Cattle Welfare July 16-18 in Ames, Iowa, a series of hands-on demonstrations were conducted to illustrate low-stress cattle handling, but also practical tips applicable when performing procedures on individual animals.
Nebraska veterinarian and cattle-handling specialist Tom Noffsinger demonstrated how to use consistent communicative signals to move cattle into pens and through working facilities. He emphasized that when inducing, maintaining or stopping animal movement, the primary receiver of stimuli is an animal’s eye.
“Cattle crave to see the destination and whoever is guiding them simultaneously,” said Noffsinger. “A handler initiates movement and guides animals through (his or her) body position and posture, but you work off the eye.”
Noffsinger also emphasized the benefits of acclimating cattle to new surroundings and moving them through a processing facility once, prior to restraining them and performing vaccinations or other procedures.
Dee Griffin, feedlot veterinarian at the University of Nebraska Great Plains Veterinary Education Center, offered tips for restraining individual animals using ropes. He urged familiarity with numerous knots that make rope restraint safer for the animal and the handler. Griffin said the most important knot may be the bowline, which can be used to secure a loop around an animal’s neck that will not pull tight and cause the animal to choke.
Another must-know knot is the Honda knot — the same one used to make the “eye” loop in the end of a lariat. Griffin also demonstrated the weaver or sheet bend knot, which can be used to fasten the ends of two ropes together and remain easily untied. A clove-hitch halter-tie knot is Griffin’s favorite for securing an animal’s head to one side of a chute, to gain access to the jugular vein.
Griffin showed how to apply the bowline-tied loop around the neck, a half-hitch around the withers and another half-hitch around the flank area to cast an animal for treatment. He called it a good method to know and apply when a chute is not accessible.
For more information and online demonstrations, Griffin advised cattle handlers to consult www.animatedknots.com, calling it “an excellent knot-tying Internet site.”
Editor’s Note: Troy Smith is a cattleman and freelance writer from Sargent, Neb.