BRANDON — Dylan Biggs resembles a football coach as he describes ways to handle livestock that lessen stress to the animals and the people working them.
A tall, sturdy figure, he talks about positioning and timing and how to read the livestock.
At one point, he kneels in a sorting pen and illustrates a point by etching lines in the dirt with his hands.
But the clinic he is giving here about low-stress livestock handling lacks the fanfare of most football games — and it is nothing like the whoop-em-up cattle drives depicted in western movies.
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There are no shouts and piercing whistles to coax the cattle in the direction they should go. Absent are the cracking whips and the flailing arms of people frustrated by cattle that won’t go where they’re supposed to.
The point Biggs emphasizes throughout the two-day clinic is patience and an understanding of how cattle interpret the body movements of people working with them.
“I’d say it took me a good two years before everything started to gel,” he said, describing the effort needed to hone the approach used at his family’s ranch near Coronation, Alta.
Was it worth the effort?
Biggs would say it was.
In a manual he circulated during the training clinic in Brandon, he describes how cattle handling was once anticipated with anxiety at his family’s ranch.
“When I was growing up it was inevitable that somebody, whether it was mother, us kids, or the dog, would get yelled at,” he writes.
“You could never quite be in the right place at the right time. Feelings were hurt and tears often the result.”
Biggs suspects that most farm families with livestock have endured similar experiences.
With the approach he now uses, Biggs said cattle handling has become one of the most enjoyable jobs on their ranch.
He cites other benefits from low-stress livestock handling, including better returns to producers. Biggs believes low-stress handling can reduce shrinkage when cattle are being moved off pasture, sorted and loaded for shipment.
He also underlines the benefits that low-stress handling can have on herd health. Stress encountered by cattle while being handled acts as an immune system suppressant, said Biggs. That leaves them more vulnerable to viral and bacterial diseases.
Glen and Doreen Hicks of Ninga, Man., share his enthusiasm.
They have applied the principles of low-stress handling and found cattle are easier to work with and more valuable at sale time.
They ship cattle to Nebraska and have found a noticeable decline in shrinkage, Doreen said. Echoing Biggs’s sentiments, she said patience is a virtue when working with cattle.
“You have to make sure you have it drilled into your head that you don’t have to have it done in half an hour or an hour.”
During the two-day clinic at Brandon, sponsored by Manitoba Agriculture, Biggs showed how a handler can work cattle at a calm pace. He also showed how haste can cost time.
“You see how he’s stopped that front end by getting up there too far,” said Biggs, as one of the participants herded heifers across a pasture.
“If he was back 10 steps those heifers would keep going. If he gets too far ahead he’s going to kill the momentum he has.”
Watching from the sidelines, it was evident to cattle producer Garry Hill that Biggs’s methods have merit, but would take time to master.
“It’s just like hockey. It’s easy to see the play developing when you’re watching, but when you’re a player, it’s hard to know.”
