Farmscape for February 7, 2017

A Professor with the University of Melbourne says small changes in the way pigs are moved can dramatically impact productivity.
The Human-Animal Relationship: Pig Welfare, Productivity and Training Strategies was discussed last week as part of the 2017 Manitoba Swine Seminar.
Professor Grahame Coleman, a Professor in the Animal Welfare Science Centre at the University of Melbourne, estimates 20 percent of the variation in productivity on farm can be attributed to handling.

Clip-Professor Grahame Coleman-University of Melbourne:
One of the basic findings and it was somewhat surprising was that routine behaviors that stock people use to move their animals turn out to be aversive to the animal.
Things like slapping the animal, not being malicious or not using any kind of intent of cruelty but just slapping the animal, maybe moving it too fast, shouting, those kinds of things turn out to be aversive to the animal and increase the animal's stress levels.
Those increases in stress levels lead to a reduction in productivity.
The kind of handling we're talking about, as I said before, are not extreme behaviors.
They are things that are more or less used routinely but with a higher intensity than is necessary to move the animal appropriately.
Things like the amount of force that is used to move an animal, the volume with which people vocalize to animals, the speed with which they try to move them, all those kinds of things are the things that are the negative behaviors and the ones we need to reduce..
The positive ones are just the opposite of that.
Talking quietly, resting your hand on the back of the animal when the opportunity arises, moving slowly, allowing the animal a little bit of time if it's pausing because of some object in front of it or a change in light levels, those kinds of things, they're all the recommended strategies for handling animals appropriately.

Dr. Coleman says the response to these findings within industry has been extremely positive.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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