Chronicle Editor
ONE of the frustrating things for livestock farmers is dealing with temperamental animals especially cattle.
Temperamental cattle are not only a danger to the handler but also waste a lot of time as any work around such animals no matter how small, it always turns into a serious rodeo.
It should be stated that temperamental animals can cause serious injuries or even death to the handler and hence they should be approached with utmost caution. Some animals are temperamental as an inherited behaviour while others learn this behaviour due to poor management practice by the farmer. We therefore want to look at how we can deal with temperamental animals in our herd in ways that minimise exposure of injury to both the animal and the handler.
First and foremost farmers should have and use appropriate handling facilities when working their animals. This means you should have handling pens, a cattle race and a cattle crush. The handling pens should be made of strong material and of appropriate height to prevent easy breach of the enclosure. The cattle race should be of correct dimensions to prevent an animal from turning around within the race or animals packing in twos instead of a single file.
A cattle crush that works properly will naturally help to restrain an animal in one place for whatever work that needs to be done on the animal. This could be simple ear tagging or even hot iron branding. Weak or short cattle handling pens encourage breaching of the perimeter and this teaches your animals bad behaviour of escaping necessary work sessions or overnight penning through breaching the perimeter enclosure.
As a general principle, when working your animals it is good practice to do it with as minimum noise as possible.
Noise excites your animals and once they are excited, they want to run and escape. I am aware that in the majority of cases we work our animals in utmost noise, lots of whistling and shouting, just got to a communal dipping session to witness what am talking about! Also minimise unnecessary crowds when working your animals.
It is advisable to have only the persons who are directly involved in the work that is taking place. The presence of too many people unsettles your animals, firstly because some are unfamiliar faces and secondly because of the talking that when combined adds to significant noise.
This usually happens when loading animals into a truck for the market. Instead of having your usual stockman load the animals, the whole clan is excited at the possibility of having money by the end of day and they come to witness the momentous occasion! The other important aspect in managing temperamental animals, is to have them regularly use the facilities such as cattle race, the pens and the crush.
This is particularly a challenge for livestock farmers using self contained facilities. Farmers with large private paddocks tend to let their animals roam the paddocks, just checking them occasionally. The animals have very minimal interface with humans save for one or two stockmen.
They hardly go into handling pens and the race and this becomes a challenge when the time comes to use these facilities. Each time you buy stock from a commercial farmer you have to be prepared for an elaborate rodeo just to load them into the truck and another rodeo when you offload them at your communal place.
The animals spend the whole day trotting around frightened by mere presence of so much human life around! I have also seen animals that are very difficult to drive into the dip tank and farmers end up simply letting it go without dipping. Such an animal needs to be brought back alone when all others are gone and all the noise gone and made to dip like other animals. This will help it to learn and appreciate that this is a normal process and in future it will go in much easier with the rest of the herd.
Another important consideration when working with temperamental animals, is to know your quick escape route.
Animal can charge at you, especially the one that has a very young calf. You will need to escape and it does not help to put yourself in a position where you cannot escape easily. Lastly it should be stated that while an overly docile animal is good to work with, it is largely vulnerable and can easily lose its calf to predation because of the docility.
Temperamental animals tend to put up a good fight for their calf and this may save the calf from predation.
Uyabonga umntakaMaKhumalo. Mhlupheki Dube is a livestock specialist and he writes in his personal capacity.
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