Livestock Handling and Transport

Temple Grandin

• Publisher: CAB International
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781789244168
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Tecnología e ingeniería
• Subtopic: Cría de animales

Edited by world-renowned animal scientist Dr. Temple Grandin, this practical book integrates scientific research and industry literature on cattle, pigs, poultry, sheep, goats, deer, and horses, in both the developed and developing world, to provide a practical guide to humane handling and minimizing animal stress. Reviewing the latest research on transport systems, restraint methods and facilities for farms and slaughterhouses, this fully updated fourth edition of Livestock Handling and Transport includes new coverage of animal handling in South America, and reviews extensive new research on pig transportation in North America.

1 A Whole Systems Approach to Assessing Animal Welfare During Handling and Restraint

Temple Grandin*
Department of Animal Sciences, Colorado State University, USA

Abstract

To optimize animal welfare, whole handling systems must be evaluated because there are trade-offs between the different components of an entire system. Some of the factors that will affect the best choice of a handling system are: (i) the skill level of the stock people; (ii) the behavioural characteristics of the animals; and (iii) the design of the races, chutes or corrals. A simple handling system – which may be acceptable for tame cattle that are trained to lead – may have serious welfare problems if it is used with extensively raised sheep or cattle with large flight zones. There are two approaches to facility design: (i) low cost but highly dependent on stock person skills; or (ii) higher cost but easily operated by less skilled people. The choice of race or of yard design is also affected by breed of the animal and its previous handling experiences. Cattle, pigs and sheep will be easier to handle if they are acclimatized to people walking through them. An example of a trade-off in facility design is controlled atmosphere (CAS) stunning of chickens versus electrical stunning. CAS provides the advantage of less stressful handling because live shackling is eliminated; its disadvantage is that unconsciousness is not instantaneous. Some discomfort during the induction of unconsciousness, such as gasping, is offset by less handling stress. All CAS stunning systems should be evaluated by observing the behaviour of the animal before it becomes unconscious and loses the ability to stand.

Keywords: cattle, handling, pigs, poultry, sheep, stress, welfare

Introduction

When assessing the suitability of a particular piece of equipment or handling procedure for animals, there are often trade-offs. To optimize animal welfare, the entire system should be examined. The whole system has three main components. These are: (i) the skill level of the stock people handling the animals; (ii) the behavioural characteristics of the livestock; and (iii) the design of the facility. A system that could be operated with a high level of welfare in one situation may be highly detrimental to welfare in a different situation. In this introductory chapter, examples will be provided to illustrate trade-offs between the different components of a system.

Effect of facilities

A facility design that may work well in one situation may be really poor in another. A simple handling system that may be used with a high level of welfare for tame cattle that are trained to lead would be very detrimental for the welfare of extensively raised wild cattle with large flight zones. Since the 3rd edition of Livestock Handling and Transport, there have been undercover videos of extensively raised cattle or sheep being handled in slaughter facilities that had been designed for tame animals. The slaughter plants concerned had no chutes, races or restraining equipment to hold the wild livestock, which had not been trained to lead. The lack of facilities resulted in animals slipping on the floor and falling and in serious abuse by people. To correct these problems would require the construction of races, chutes and other systems that are described in Chapter 4 (Grandin), and in Grandin (1997a) and Grandin and Deesing (2008). A basic principle is that extensively raised cattle and sheep that have not lived in close contact with people will require more expensive and elaborate facilities for handling, restraint and loading on to transport vehicles than animals that are trained to lead. For example, a race system may not be required for calm tame cattle that are trained to lead.

Skill dependent versus less skill dependent handling facilities

When stock people are highly knowledgeable of the behavioural principles of livestock handling, simpler and more economical facilities may be very effective and provide good animal welfare. The author watched six wild Karakul sheep being herded by two very skilled stock people who moved them around the perimeter of a corral and expertly restrained them for injections behind a long gate. The sheep were moved calmly by two handlers who worked the edge of the flight zone and stood at the correct positions. Their rudimentary corral system had no race or forcing pens. It would have been terrible if it had been used by less skilled people. In a place with high employee turnover or less skilled people, a system with races, alleys and a forcing pen would have been required. Since the 3rd edition of this book, there has been increasing interest in learning low stress cattle handling methods and an emphasis on using simpler facilities (Burt, 2008; Kidwell, 2011). People who successfully adopt this approach must develop their stock handling skills to a high level, which often requires several weeks of dedicated practice. The use of these methods reduces the flight zone of the animals and they become less wild. In another approach, the author (Grandin, 1997a) has designed curved handling facilities for many years, and these work effectively with less skilled people who can be easily trained in a single day. To summarize – handling facilities can be either:

• simple, economical and highly skill dependent; or

• more expensive and less dependent on the skill of the stock persons.

Safety issues

The use of very simple facilities often requires more time to handle the animals. If they are used by less skilled people, there may also be safety issues for people. More elaborate facilities can be designed so that people do not have to get in small pens with wild cattle with large flight zones. Douphrate et al. (2009) found that accidents that occur while handling livestock were the cause of many of the worst injuries on the farm. A survey of Australian veterinarians indicated that 57% of serious injuries were during pregnancy checking of cattle (Lucas et al., 2012). A basic principle is to provide safety for both people and animals; wild extensively raised cattle, sheep, deer and other animals will require more elaborate expensive handling facilities than tame animals.

Providing health care

Health care, such as vaccinations and treatment for sickness, is more likely to be administered if there are races, head gates (head stanchions) and other facilities for easily restraining and handling animals. The only exception to this rule is totally tame animals that are completely trained to lead. Figure 1.1 shows a simple compact race and crowd pen system that is being used by farmer feeders for handling cattle. Tim Hadley from Eblex in the UK reports that use of this design has greatly facilitated veterinary care for cattle. The layout fits into a relatively small space and takes advantage of the natural behaviour of cattle to go back to where they came from. The cattle on these farms have a small flight zone because they live in barns, but they are not trained to lead.

Differences in Animals

Breed

The breed of cattle, sheep or pigs can have an effect on temperament and behaviour during handling (Baszczak et al., 2006). More excitable animals exit more rapidly from squeeze chutes (crushes) and struggle more during restraint (Cafe et al., 2011). Some animals are more excitable and have a higher startle response when they are suddenly introduced into a new and novel environment (Grandin, 1997b). Animals with more excitable genetics may be calm and easy to handle when they are in a familiar environment on the home farm but they may become highly agitated when brought to a slaughter plant or auction. Deiss et al. (2009), Bourguet et al. (2010) and Terlouw et al. (2012) conducted studies that showed that the novelty of the new environment at a slaughter plant caused greater stress in the animals that were more excitable when temperament was tested on the farm. Agitation in animals during handling is caused by fear. The fear circuits in animal’s brains have been mapped (Panksepp, 2010; Jones and Boissy, 2011; Morris et al., 2011; LeDoux, 2012), and breed differences in behaviour during handling may be due to genetic differences in fearfulness.

Specific animal experiences affect handling

Animal memories of previous experiences are very specific. If a horse becomes habituated to a blue and white umbrella, that learning will not transfer to an orange tarp (canvas) (Leiner and Fendt, 2011). Taming ewes to people did not generalize to other procedures, such as handling, shearing or movement through a race (Mateo et al., 1991). If an experience that an animal will have in the future is similar to a previous experience, the animal may be able to generalize. Lewis et al. (2008) found that stress caused by moving through a loading ramp can be reduced by training pigs to go through alleys and ramps. Further studies with cattle showed that carefully acclimatizing cattle by moving them through yards and corrals reduced stress at the slaughter plant (Petherick et al., 2009). The reactions of animals indicate that their memories are sensory based and stored as specific images or sounds (Grandin and Johnson, 2005). Cattle differentiate between a person on a horse and a person walking on the ground. Extensively reared cattle that have been handled exclusively on horseback may have only a 1 m flight zone, but when they first encounter a person walking on the ground at an auction or slaughter plant, their flight zone may expand to 10 m. This can be dangerous for a handler in a small pen because the animal may run wildly back and forth or attempt to leap the fence to get away from the person. The cattle perceive the man on foot as novel and frightening and the man on the horse as familiar and safe. Ideally, cattle should be acclimatized to being moved on foot before they arrive at markets and slaughter plants (Grandin and Deesing, 2008).

Fig. 1.1. Economical cattle handling system with a round crowd pen. Cattle will enter the single-file race easily because they are moving back to where they came from. The handler can stand on the small catwalk at the crowd gate pivot point to direct the cattle into the race.

A similar problem can occur in pigs or cattle that are raised indoors. The animals differentiate between a person in the alley and a person walking through their pens. To produce calm animals that will be easy to load on to trucks and handle at their destination requires people walking through their pens during the entire fattening period. This will get the animals accustomed to moving quietly away when a person walks through them. Pigs that first experience a person in their pens on the day they are shipped are more likely to be difficult to handle. They may bunch together and squeal. Acclimatization to a person walking through them is especially important with more excitable genetic lines. In the USA, the large integrated pork companies have a standard procedure that instructs people to walk through the finishing (fattening pens) every day. Another factor that can affect animal handling is whether or not animals are socialized to other animals. Intact bulls that have been reared on small farms where they are always kept tied by a halter will often fight and mount each other when they are put into group pens. The fighting and mounting may be more severe than in cattle reared in groups. Furthermore, bulls with low fear showed more mounting than bulls with higher fearfulness (Mark Deesing, 2013, personal communication).

Handling problems caused by debilitated or stressed animals

It is difficult to handle animals in a low stress manner and maintain good welfare if they are weak, lame or debilitated, and it is the responsibility of the producer to provide an animal that is fit for transport and handling. Some of the worst problems are in old cull breeding animals that are lame or very weak. Objective scoring tools are available in many countries for evaluating the condition of animals. Some of the most commonly used outcome measures are body condition score, lameness scoring, udder condition scoring and hock leg lesion scoring (Wildman, 1982; Fulwider et al., 2007). In the USA, cows with poor body condition are a greater problem in dairy than in beef cattle (Ahola et al., 2011). Livestock should be marketed when they are still fit for transport.

Both research and the author’s own observations have shown that overuse of beta agonists such as ractopamine and zilpaterol may also cause handling problems. Marchant-Forde et al. (2003) reported that pigs fed high doses of ractopamine were more difficult to handle. Ractopamine at high doses can also cause hoof lesions in pigs (Poletto et al., 2009, 2010). The author has observed feedlot cattle at the slaughter plant that had (previously) been fed beta agonists and were both lame and heat stressed (Grandin, 2010a, 2013). Other research has shown that animals fed beta agonists had signs of both heat stress and higher body temperatures (Macías-Cruz et al., 2010; Vogel, 2011). Heat stress symptoms were sometimes more likely when the temperature was over 32 °C (90 °F). The detrimental effects were very uneven. A few animals had severe heat stress and were reluctant to move but many of the other animals behaved normally. This may possibly be due to uneven feed mixing – some animals may have received a much higher dose of beta agonists. In cattle, open mouth breathing is a sign of severe heat stress (Mader et al., 2006). As panting increases and the tongue becomes further extended, the internal body temperature of cattle rises (Gaughan and Mader, 2012). Cattle with black hides get hotter during hot weather than do cattle with light coloured hair.

Genetic abnormalities can also contribute to handling and transport problems. Murray and Johnson (1998) report that handling losses are affected in pigs with the PSS (porcine stress syndrome) gene: death losses during transport were 9.2% in homozygotes, 0.27% in heterozygotes and 0.05% in PSS gene free animals. Indiscriminate selection for production traits such as rapid growth may result in a failure to select against structural defects. At the slaughter plant, the author has made observations that half of the market weight pigs were lame. The lameness was due to poor leg conformation. The pig either had straight post legged legs or the ankle was collapsed and the pig was walking on its dew claws. Selection for small feet in pigs to satisfy a specialized market may also increase the percentage of lame pigs.

System Type and Overall Welfare Trade-Offs

When animal welfare is being evaluated at a slaughter plant, both the associated stunning method and handling methods should be evaluated as an entire system. There are tradeoffs between the different parts of the system. A good example is the methods used for stunning and handling pigs and chickens.

In both species, electrical stunning will produce instantaneous unco...