CHAIN LAKES, Alta. – When Gordon Hazard hires new people to work on his Mississippi ranch, he emphasizes a philosophy of low stress livestock handling.
“I don’t want a cowboy. I want a cattleman,” he said earlier this fall during a seminar on grazing and cattle management at Chain Lakes in southern Alberta.
Nervous cattle defecate, urinate and salivate more. That costs money because they are losing weight.
“Every time that calf defecates, it costs you $5.”
He uses the concept of low stress handling and understands cattle are prey animals that regard people as predators.
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They have a flight zone or personal space and if someone gets too close, they move away. Not understanding this can force them to go the wrong way.
He trains his cattle within a few days to move to new paddocks and not to fear him so they can be moved into new pastures or loaded more easily into trucks.
“The only way to get them to stop is to make them think you are their friend,” he said.
Temperament is heritable but some problems could start at weaning with certain animals, said Hazard. His operation practices soft weaning where the calves are slowly removed from their mothers. The cattle are quieter and there is less sickness.
In the last 15 years Alberta meat inspector Sandy Stafford has seen the results of low stress handling and improved care of livestock when they come to the abattoir.
“Improved handling has come so far as the herd health has,” he said.
Inspectors watch how animals are handled at plants and see the damage from bruises and other injuries that could devalue a carcass.
The inspectors are also looking for overall condition and disease where they check the head, carcass and organs.
“The lymphatic system can reveal the story,” he said.
If they find something wrong, they contact the veterinarians on staff.
In provincial plants they tend to see fewer abscessed livers compared to a large federal plant where 20 percent of livers may have to be condemned.
Heart, kidney and liver problems may be related to what happened to them at the feedyard.
You can almost tell which feedlot they came from,” he said.
