Recent Conference Report
Monday, July 13th, 2009
The recent P.C.R.A.A. conference held in Melbourne provided attendees with many “take home messages”.
Dr. Temple Grandin, the renowned animal behaviour specialist was the keynote speaker. She gave two presentations, one on the science of animal behaviour and the other on auditing farm stock handling practices.
Dr Grandin is keen that graziers, dairy farmers and other stock handlers improve the way they handle animals and is adamant that unless improvements are measured producers will slip back into bad habits. She said that producers measure indicators of economic benefit such as weight gain, feed conversion and reproductive rates so they should measure handling. In collaboration with her researchers, she has collected base line data for measuring indicators of good handling practices and has established, from these, reasonable targets.
Some of Dr. Grandin’s scoring figures are:-
- less than 25 cent of cattle in the yards should move at faster than a trot,
- less than 5 per cent should need the electric prod,
- only 1 per cent should fall over or crash into something and
- less than 5 per cent should vocalise when in the crush, except for when they’re branded.
“If you work on improving your handling, you will achieve those numbers.”
Dr Grandin had excellent PowerPoint presentations which illustrated some of her tips for better stock handling:-
- Remain calm when handling stock.
- Identify and remove things in the yards which baulk animals. Her slides showed examples such as shadows across races, stock walking into direct sunlight, dangling chains, workers in the yards, drains and flapping items.
- Never fill the forcing pen more than half full.
- Use it as a “passing through” pen so cattle can move straight up the race.
- Utilise flight zone principals. Walking in the opposite direction to that in which the animals need to go, can move animals effectively.
- Once animals start to move in the desired direction it is important to move out of their flight zone.
- Use the point of balance, which is at the animal’s shoulder. Cattle will move forward if the handler stands behind the point of balance and back up if the handler stands in front of it.
Dr Grandin said some producers would need to improve their stock handling facilities to help improve their handling. These improvements could often be made without significant changes to existing infrastructure. Ideas can be found at Dr Grandin’s website (www.grandin.com).
To help make simple changes by removing things which make animals baulk, it is helpful to look at yards through the animals’ eyes.
Dr Grandin said improvements in handling will prove cost-effective as they will lead to calmer animals which gain more weight. There is also the benefit that calmer animals are less likely to cost the enterprise money by injuring themselves or people working in the yards.
Other speakers were Claire Kentler,a science graduate who is working at LaTrobe University, who gave an excellent presentation about boosting calf immunity.
Some of the key points of her talk were:-
- Calves are born without immunity to disease.
- Colostrum will provide immunity so long as the calf has sufficient quantity of high quality colostrum early enough in life (4ℓ within the first 6 hours).
- 40% of dairy calves do not receive sufficient colostrum to provide immunity to disease.
- As a rule of thumb, older cows have better quality colostrum than heifers and second calvers.
- Calves which do not have adequate colostrum are often sick or fail to thrive in the pre-weaning period.
- These calves which do not do well in the first few weeks of life are usually the first to be culled from the herd.
Dr. Peter Wynn, who is Professor of Animal Science at Charles Sturt University at Wagga Wagga, gave a fascinating presentation about the work he has done with the dairy industry in Pakistan. Change in countries such as this can be hard to implement for many reasons. One example is that in Pakistan a sign of great honour is to give friends and acquaintances a bottle of fresh colostrum. This means that the calf never has access to this nutrient, which is a key factor in good health. Many of the calves shown in his slides were showing signs of severe ill thrift, which is in part due to the lack of colostrum. Many calves in Pakistan are never fed milk; they are expected to survive from day one on fresh green chop. Consequently, many die and those which do survive are malnourished and prone to disease.
The day provided a great deal of thought provoking material; wonderful food and a very enjoyable evening meal completed a very stimulating day.