One of the hottest topics online and in the news is animal welfare and rights. My question to you, reader, is, “Have you ever thought about it?” I have, and am, worried about it. One of the biggest questions online with bovine practitioners is “What do we do about it?”
Well, one answer is for all of us locally to band together and work to promote proper animal handling. This will mean some changes to the way some of you handle cattle. I know some of you do the best that you can with what you have. But that is not going to be good enough in the future. Facilities will have to be better and our practices more humane.
This doesn’t mean your facilities will have to be state of the art, but more efficient and safer for man and animal. Bottlenecks where cattle tend to bunch up will have to be worked out for an even flow of animals. We will no longer be able to stand there and beat on an animal with a stick, or overuse a hot shot. This does not mean they, sticks and hot shots, will be banned from use, but they will need to be used sparingly. Nothing is worse than a person standing there, beating an animal or overusing a hot shot. Stop and think of another way to go about it.
An example would be getting an animal to move up into a squeeze chute from the crowd alley. A simple way is to walk straight back at them. As soon as you get past their head they normally move forward into the chute. I have done this numerous times and it does work. Some other methods of moving cattle are to be in the flight zone. This flight zone is a 45 degree angle from their point of the shoulder and back behind them on the same side. We have all done this while walking a cow up to the pens following a fence line.
What has brought this topic alive has been ABC News’ Nightline segments on the dairy in New York. Some of the practices depicted in the report were normal to me, but some of them I would not have anything to do with. I think we all have to have limits and ethics. I do not believe any of the ABC News reporters have ever seen a person or another animal hit by an animal with sharp horns. If they had, they would probably want to remove all horns also.
I have seen animals torn up by other horned animals. I have seen a person ripped open by a horned animal. Believe me, it’s not pretty. And all it would have taken to prevent is someone to restrain the horned animal and either tip or remove the horns.
In this segment by ABC News, they were upset with the fact that the dairy was artificially inseminating the cows for continued production. I would do this also. Have you ever seen what a dairy bull can do to a person? I have heard stories and seen them in action. As far as I’m concerned, the dairy breed bull is one of the most dangerous animals on the farm. Second runner up is the bucking bull. The reason for this is that you are expecting it from a bucking bull, and I have worked on some very rank bucking bulls. The fastest and meanest bull I have ever worked on was either a Holstein or Jersey. The Jersey did move faster, but that Holstein was fast for as big as he was. I even know a client that was put into the hospital a year and a half ago by a Holstein bull. He almost lost his life.
I will continue this topic in the next article. Please remember to fight back against PETA and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). We will have to band together, increase our awareness and check the ethics of what we do with our livestock.
Dr. Tim O’Neill owns Country Veterinary Clinic in Farmington, Ark.
