Livestock Safety - Understanding Livestock Behaviour

By Serena Gibbons, Education Office, Teagasc Galway/Clare

Understanding the behaviour of livestock will facilitate handling, reduce stress, and improve both handler safety and animal welfare.

Large animals can seriously injure handlers and/or themselves if they become excited or agitated. The renowned animal behaviourist Temple Gradin has dedicated her life to the research of the behaviour of livestock and in particular cattle handling facilities design.

The majority of stock people will act safety out of instinct; nevertheless here are some of Temple Grandin’s key points to should consider when handling animals to ensure both the stock person and animal stay safe.

Vision:

Livestock have wide angle vision, ideally loading ramps and handling facilities should have solid side walls to prevent animals from seeing distractions outside the crush with their wide angle. Moving objects and people seen through the sides of a crush can cause hesitation or frighten livestock. Blocking vision will stop escape attempts. In areas where animals are handled, light should be uniform. Shadows and bright spots should be minimised, flapping objects or even a coat hung on a fence may stop animal movement. Livestock have colour perception. Numerous investigators have now confirmed that cattle, pigs, sheep and goats all possess colour vision. Handling facilities should be painted one uniform colour. All livestock are more likely to balk at a sudden change in colour or texture.

Grazing animals have a visual system that provides excellent distance vision but relatively weak eye muscles inhibit the ability to focus quickly on nearby objects. Animals will often refuse to enter a building that looks dark. This is most likely to be a problem on a bright sunny day. Animals will enter a building more easily if they can see daylight in the building, having some light in the distance will help as animals will naturally want to move towards light. This is also the case when loading animals into a trailer or lorry, it will take animals up to 30 seconds for them to focus and realise there is a loading ramp, therefore a slight delay prior to loading will allow animals to see the nearby ramp to trailer or lorry.

The Experienced Leader:

When moving animals from A to B, There will always be a leader, when the lead animal sees a distraction it may stop. If the lead animal is allowed to stop and look, it may walk past the distraction and lead the other cattle. If the cattle are pushed too hard towards a distraction they may turn back and the operation becomes more difficult. We have all been here and it’s a negative experience for both livestock and handlers, it can take up to 20 minutes for animals to regain a level of calm following a break away or a turn back.

Animals may refuse to walk through a crush if they can see motion up ahead, again an experienced animal that has previously had a very negative experience will be slower to enter the crush on the subsequent occasions. Having a funnel or circular structure in place on the lead up to the crush will greatly reduce the animals’ cautiousness as they will be in the crush before they realise it, this will in turn lead to a more positive experience for animal and handler.

Flight Zone:

The flight zone of an animal is their personal space, animals who have a small flight zone are used to human contact, e.g. the dairy cow, while animals that have limited human contact will have a larger flight zone and therefore will move away from handler from a further distance. All people must remain outside the animal's flight zone until it is time to enter the flight zone to move an animal. If a person continually stands inside the flight zone, cattle standing in a crush may become agitated and start scuffing their feet or rearing. After a person enters the flight zone to treat the animal or move an animal through the crush, they must immediately back up and remove themselves from the flight zone.

Effects of Genetics:

In all animals, both genetic factors and experience determine how an individual animal will behave in a fear-provoking situation. Fearfulness is a stable characteristic of personality and temperament in animals. Animals with a highly-strung, nervous temperament are generally more fearful and form stronger fear memories than animals with calm, placid temperaments. Therefore breeding for docility will play a big role in behaviour of your animals. When selecting breeding stock, particular attention should be given to their temperament and ease of handling. Aggressive or difficult to handle animals should be culled.

 “If we get the animal's emotions right, we will have fewer problem behaviours” 
Temple Grandin

Shadows or poor light at the entrance to shed will discourage animals from entering.