Chelsea Livestock Services is your one-stop shop for improving the handling of cattle within your business. Our diverse range of services is designed to benefit you and your business by enhancing your livestock management practices, improving animal welfare, and overall efficiency.
Alex brings her experience from handling livestock all over Australia, on live export ships and overseas to you – advocating the benefits of a quiet approach through correct body language, application of the Livestock Handling Principles and through the adoption of a caregiver role. Our passion is to reduce stress by handling cattle in a way that they understand and one that ensures the longevity of the relationship between both species.
Acclimation is the handling of livestock that introduces them to their environment in a way that makes them feel safe and comfortable, introduces them to novel things such as eating from a bunk, drinking from different troughs, moving through new facilities and co-mingling with new cattle. It is a practice that gets heads down eating and legs tucked up resting and ruminating sooner. Its application is applicable in feedlots, in pre-export facilities, onboard live export ships and on farms.
When cattle see you as a caregiver, they are less likely to feel the need to defend themselves, which reduces overall risk, and they are more likely to show you if they are unwell or injured. An animal who feels unsafe is unlikely to show when it is vulnerable – for fear that it is an easy prey. On the contrary, if animals view you as a caregiver, you have successfully built rapport, and they are willing to let their guard down. This allows you to see when the animal is becoming unwell and administer care sooner, than if they didn’t trust you.
Like the boy who cried wolf, when we yell, shout, and hit cattle to go forward, we eventually desensitise them to our requests. The boy who cried wolf yelled for help, and the townspeople came running – but only two times before they became desensitised to his request. Cattle are stoic and can put up with a lot, however, if we continuously ask of them with no release, then we run the risk of them ceasing to react. Have you ever watched someone hit an animal up a race when it has nowhere to go?
When we desensitise our cattle, it is us that have to work harder – either through physically running and moving, or through increasing the volume or severity of our voice and aids (jigger, stick). If we can get cattle to move off a light touch then we are asking them to do their job with less stress on them – a positive for welfare.
We demonstrate this by releasing pressure at the right time – once the animal has moved for us we thank it by releasing pressure – and this is done by getting the trainee to notice when their presence or pressure has had an effect. Through reading the body language of the animal we can see when we have made an impression. If the animal has moved then there is no need to increase our pressure.
Through experience, we have come to see that there are several laws or principles that govern livestock movement. The prominent four are: flight zone, pressure and release, parallel movement and point of balance. In addition, there are natural senses and behaviours of livestock that influence the principles. They are simple things like the animals sight, sense of smell, touch, taste and hearing, and natural behaviours like being a prey animal vs being a predator and having a herd mentality.
Our written and taught material touches on all of these influencing factors.
