Temple Grandin's Insight: Animal Welfare

Hey y’all!

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while! It’s that time of year: holidays and finals. So, first I want to give a shout out to my out of country readers! I have had a few readers from Ukraine, France, Russia, UK, Canada and Venezuela! Thank you all for your support. This month I would finally like to write about when I met Temple Grandin in October and how much she improved my perspective on certain things. I’m going to break it down into two or three posts, because she gave so much information. I was so blessed to be able to meet her. Let me introduce you to Dr. Grandin…

Temple Grandin is a woman who was diagnosed with autism at an early age, in 1950. Luckily her parents were able to encourage her, find people who could help her, and send her to school even though they were told that she should be institutionalized. Dr. Grandin has now written many books, and truly impacted the animal agriculture industry as well as the autism community. I was able to hear her speak on three different occasions the week that she was visiting our university. Though she spoke much differently than I expected, the insight that she provided was unlike anything I could have imagined to gain. One thing you should know before reading this is that she put emphasis on everything. She was so passionate about every small detail and I cannot begin to convey her passion through the words of an online article. I will do my best, but if you have the opportunity, please go see her in person. Also keep in mind that these facts are straight from notes I took during her talks so I won’t have any references this time!

In her talk about animal welfare, one of the first things she mentioned was that the biggest problem in the animal agriculture industry was misuse of equipment or drugs. Here are the basic animal welfare points:

 ·         Lameness

 ·         Body condition score

 ·         Air quality

 ·         Coat/feather conditions

 ·         Skin lesions

 ·         Is the animal dirty?

 ·         Abnormal behaviors

According to Dr. Grandin, even if you have the best, up-to-date equipment but your handling procedures are bad then you will get bad results. Another big point was simply good management. Management includes the workers on a ranch or slaughter facility as well as the actual manager or owner. Workers need to use equipment properly, and understand why the equipment works. They need to give proper dosage when vaccinating, or treating an animal. Breeders and producers should “select for optimum not maximum.” Dr. Grandin said that phrase at least 4 times during her visit. Bad feet and legs can be linked to desirable carcass traits. And lame animals don’t make it to slaughter. On a dairy in California smaller cows are chosen because they give 3-4 years of milking rather than a large cow which gives maximum amounts of milk in just 2 years. This is choosing for optimum rather than maximum.

Dr. Grandin believes that the most important thing to fix is management. She says that “people with good attitudes and handling.” She said over and over that good management is key. When she first started, the electric prod was used in nearly all facilities, for pretty much everything. Now, when you walk into a facility an electric prod is almost never seen in use unless absolutely necessary. If it is taken out, it is immediately put away once it is used. Cattle handled carefully and calmly have lower cortisol levels. Cortisol is the hormone that is associated with stress and anxiety. Excitable cattle take about 30 minutes to calm down. Stressed animals have lower weight gain. Excitable cattle also have lower reproductive performance. Workers need to be trained well to ensure that animals are stress free! Good management also means good thinking. When it his hot outside, make sure the animals have shade, if they’re raised outside. Heat stress is one of the hardest things to combat here in Texas as well as humid states like Nevada. “Open mouth breathing is a sign of heat stress.” If an animal is breathing with an open mouth, it needs to be cooled down. Animals have a much harder time cooling themselves down than warming themselves up. Whether animals are housed in confinement or free range, they need to be clean. A place with a lot of mud is not good for animals. They don't like to lay in the mud, and it can cause foot rot if they are constantly standing in it for long periods of time. To help decrease stress we should get animals acclimated to a number of things. Animals who have been acclimated to walking in narrow alleyways, trailers, etc. are much easier to move through normal processing procedures or slaughter facilities. Animals have specific memories and it is important to introduce them to things that they may encounter in their lifetime.  Introducing animals to what Dr. Grandin called “novelties” (balloons, flags, and/or things that they could encounter in a processing chute or fair) can really help reduce stress and flightiness in any situation.

It is our job to be good stewards to animals. Temple Grandin is so amazing and has a really amazing brain. It is really hard for me to put everything she said into my own words. She stated everything so simply and blatantly that her message could be understood by anyone. I want to encourage you to look for my follow up post about Dr. Grandin, check out www.templegrandin.com and read at least one of her books! Please leave comments or questions below!