2021 - Volume #45, Issue #4, Page #11
[ Sample Stories From This Issue | List of All Stories In This Issue | Print this story
| Read this issue]
Low Stress Cattle Handling Tool
It’s an “oral distraction” tool that can reduce fear and stress when the animal is in the chute. “Don Findlay, a cattle veterinarian from Manitoba, took this idea and created a tool that is now being marketed. Don is a graduate of our college, and went to Australia after graduating in 1978. About 10 years ago he called me to tell me about this idea. He’d found a small group of producers in Australia using this thing and wanted to know if I thought there was anything to it,” says Stookey.
This oral distraction works well for cattle because chewing is a natural behavior. If there is something foreign in the mouth, they focus on chewing it, figuring it out, trying to get rid of it, etc. It can distract them from pain and or various procedures being done to them.
Don Findlay is now marketing this tool. “We did an experiment to see how well it worked - while freeze branding we used it on half the animals. We measured heart rate, how much they struggled, etc. The animals that had the distraction had lower heart rate and less struggling than the ones without it,” says Stookey.
Easy Boss E is marketed in the U.S. and Canada and many other countries and listed for $82.40 on Partnar Animal Health website.
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Partnar Animal Health, 2014 Holland Ave, Unit 227, Port Huron, Mich. 48060 (ph 866-690-4998; www.partnaranimalhealth.com).
Click here to download page story appeared in.
Click here to read entire issue
To read the rest of this story, download this issue below or click here to register with your account number.