As spring approaches so does the likelihood of having orphan animals on the farm, but a University of Saskatchewan animal behaviour specialist warns of the dangers of bottle raising male orphans.
No matter how friendly the animals are when they’re younger, male orphans can become dangerous to their human handlers when they reach sexual maturity, said Joe Stookey of the Western College of Veterinary Medicine.
“It’s not that the animal is treating them with aggression and is trying to kill them; the animal is simply using its normal, aggression fighting skills the way it would fight with an animal in its own species,” Stookey said.
Read Also
Farming Smarter receives financial boost from Alberta government for potato research
Farming Smarter near Lethbridge got a boost to its research equipment, thanks to the Alberta government’s increase in funding for research associations.
“Rams just back off and hit heads with each other. Cows push on each other. They’re just using those normal fighting skills to climb the hierarchy and be superior. That’s all they’re doing. It’s not a viciousness; it’s just that they see you as competition and want to exert their dominance over you.”
Bottle raised orphan llamas, bulls, goats, sheep, elk, deer and bison are imprinted on their surrogate parent. Imprinting is the critical period of time early in the animal’s life when it forms attachments and develops a concept of its own species’ identity, said Stookey, who has been called as an expert witness in court cases when bottle raised male animals have hurt people.
Imprinting provides animals with information about who they are and for males it determines specifically who they will find attractive when they reach sexual maturity. Ram lambs that are raised by nanny goats will court and try and breed female goats and show little interest in ewes. Even a pet tom turkey raised by humans will try and breed the family members who raised him.
The aggression only happens with sexually intact male orphans; not females and castrated males.
“You don’t see females squaring off to settle too many disputes. Males take a bigger burden in being messed up mentally than females do.”
Stookey said when he was a child, a family from his community bottle raised a white-tailed deer. The neighbour was forced to kill the deer after it attacked family members during rut.
“It’s not an uncommon phenomenon.”
He said a literature search found 15 deer related human fatalities over five years in the United States that were likely the result of bottle raised males.
Recently, a dairy bull killed a dairy producer near Stookey’s hometown. He said the fatality wasn’t because dairy bulls are naturally more dangerous than beef bulls, but because of the way dairy animals are raised.
Stookey pointed to a 1990 study that showed Hereford bulls hand reared in dairy like conditions were just as dangerous as dairy bulls.
“These are animals that you don’t expect them to be dangerous or be a threat to people. He showed if you took Hereford cattle and reared them in dairy like conditions, individually isolated them, when they reached sexual maturity they were quite dangerous toward people.
“It’s clear I think the way we’re rearing dairy bulls is contributing to the danger they are to us.”
Stookey said every effort should be made to try and adopt the orphan to another female, castrate the male or try and raise it in a pen of similar animals to prevent imprinting on humans.
“It’s a tactful message we need to get across.”
