Farmscape for January 7, 2025

An Animal Science Professor with Colorado State University says when moving livestock, both pigs and cattle, making more trips with few animals will speed up the job.
Over the past 40 years, as the understanding of animal behaviour has improved, animal handling has also improved dramatically.
Dr. Temple Grandin, an Animal Science Professor with Colorado State University, says, although it takes more work, one of the fundamental tricks of improving the ease and efficiency of animal handling is moving smaller groups of animals.

Quote-Dr. Temple Grandin-Colorado State University:
One of the problems you have is it takes more walking due to small group sizes.
Years ago, during the 80's, I went down to Arkansas to a contract finisher grower and we had two semis to load.
Nobody had started any of the handling seminars, none of that stuff had started yet.
We've got all kinds of pork quality assurance in the U.S., all kinds of low stress handling seminars.
None of that stuff existed and they just walked in the pen and burned the pigs up with electric prods.
It was terrible.
That was their truck.
Then my truck, we were going to do five pigs at a time.
We got it loaded 20 minutes faster.
The problem with moving too big a group, you can't reach the leaders.
The same thing is true with cattle.
In a big cattle plant for example, you bring 16 up at a time, not 30.
You get into the same kind of group thing.
During COVID, there was a plant in Europe that was switching to electric stunning.
They bought four Midas electric stunners with two handling facilities going up to them and they were trying to bring 20 pigs at a time up to that system.
I said no, no, no, it's seven.
I had to really emphasize that.
They finally realized six is the correct amount.
Then you have to enforce that because it does take more walking, especially if you come from the back of the facility.

Dr. Grandin stresses the importance of monitoring and tracking stockmanship.
She suggests by measuring and scoring handling, including such factors such as slips and falls, electric prod use, body condition score, lameness, vocalization you can tell whether stockmanship is getting better or worse.

       *Farmscape is produced on behalf of North America’s pork producers