RESOLVING livestock issues is all about learning to communicate with animals, Bell Vet Services Dr Kevin Sullivan said at the LIVEX- change 2017 conference in Perth earlier this month.
Mr Sullivan said over the past 15 years he had been working to understand cattle, and as part of that he had spent time with producers across Australia to improve the health and well-being of their stock.
He said there were some simple and practical things that stockmen could do that would make a huge difference in improving their cattle.
“The thing is we want to bring cattle, horses and people together,” Mr Sullivan said.
“My goal in life is to have every feedlot processing cattle – every feed yard working all their cattle off horseback.
“Horses love cattle and cattle love horses.
“For 50 years people have been trying to take people away from the cattle – building facilities with heaps of steel and concrete so that the people can’t even see the cattle.
“I see people hiding from them – what do they want to hide from them for?
“People do stupid stuff because they don’t understand these animals.”
Mr Sullivan discussed the need for non-verbal interaction with the livestock as the way to “talk to a cow”.
“Their language isn’t verbal, they don’t know Spanish, or English, or Australian.
“What they understand is their position.
“They understand how far away you need to be and they understand how you approach them, what angle you approach them, and they understand when you stop and when you start, and how you move, that’s their language.”
Mr Sullivan said whistling and making noises to get the cattle to move “just frightens them and makes them anxious”.
“So what is called low-stress handling is successful communication with these animals,” he said.
Mr Sullivan said there were reasons why cattle “don’t eat or drink” – and it’s a lot simpler than people realise.
“We used to think they were sick, that they had pneumonia,” Mr Sullivan said.
“We would drag them out of the pen and give them antibiotics.
“They don’t need antibiotics.
“They haven’t got pneumonia.”
Mr Sullivan said cattle could live anywhere but there were things to consider when moving cattle from open pastures into confined areas.
“What is different about confinement which means that these animals are going to struggle – some of its to do with the change of address,” he said.
“That’s like going off to boarding school for the very first time.
“Lots of people there you don’t know.”
Mr Sullivan said some animals didn’t adapt to their new environment very well and would refuse to eat or drink.
He said things happened on the way to the yards – which impacted on the well-being of the animals.
Mr Sullivan said there were a number of important “stressors” that caused cattle to have problems.
“We can have physical stressors like processing, trucking, flipping over, getting beat up, dogs barking, that sort of stuff,” Mr Sullivan said.
“We can have environmental stressors, heat, cold, rain, mud, blizzards, dust storms like you can’t see across the other side of the pen.
“We have physiological stuff – the biggest one of these is dehydration and protein loss, just from being days off food in transit.
“And then we have psychological changes – these get forgotten about a little bit because people don’t really understand them and think it’s too scary or think it’s dumb and crazy.
“Psychological trauma is a big deal.”
Mr Sullivan said confinement anxiety changed animals a lot but stockmen could change them back.
“You have gotta believe that you can change these animals within minutes,” Mr Sullivan said.
“Acclamation we call it – means building trust – building confidence and getting rid of anxiety.
“There’s no one in this audience who is going to tell me that you can’t get rid of digestive problems by using cattle handling techniques.
Mr Sullivan said ignoring cattle was as good as being abusive.
“Not doing anything is not an option,” he said.
“You are either positive or you are negative there is no neutral here.
“Acclamation builds trust - confidence and reduces anxiety.
“You don’t have to do it on foot – you can do it on horseback.
“Acclamation encourages cattle to exercise, we want them to exercise with exuberance, we want them to play, we want them to feel good about themselves – and they will.
“This exercise stimulates them to eat and stimulates them to drink.
“They eat and they drink and their immune system will function and they will thrive – they will not get sick – they will not get salmonella and they don’t have any problems if they eat and they drink.”
Mr Sullivan said because cattle were prey animals and they understood predators – considering people to be predators – if people behaved like predators cattle would behave negatively.
“They are forgiving and their future behavior is determined by each handling,” Mr Sullivan said.
“And even though they have been handled poorly you can change that very quickly, within minutes.”
He said it’s all about stockmanship, “bring the people to the cattle and stop taking the people away from the cattle”.
“Understand the language of cattle,” Mr Sullivan said.
“Train the people and train the cattle.
“This builds their confidence and it creates respect and understanding for the people to the cattle but also from the cattle to the people.
“It takes away anxiety and it builds trust.”