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Weaning Without All The Stress

published: September 17th 2009
by: Allan Nation
source: The Stockman Grass and Farmer

Bud Williams believes that animals can sense our emotions and will mirror them. And so the first requirement for a low death loss on stocker calves was to love animals and your job.

"A healthy calf is a happy calf. Animal health problems are created by somebody," he said. "Animals don't just get sick. They decide to get sick. If you don't want to be there with that calf he knows it and it bothers him."

Williams worked as a consultant at a feedyard in Alberta, Canada for a number of years while going on the road teaching his "no stress" method of animal handling. He said showing up for work in the receiving yards in a bad mood was grounds for being sent home. "Our attitude is the most important thing in keeping stress off animals. If you are personally feeling stressed and uptight, you are going to produce sick calves," he said.

Bud believes that almost all animal sickness is due to stress. He pointed out that weaning is not inherently stressful to a calf. "You don't see calves walking fences and bawling in nature and yet I have had dozens of ranchers tell me that fence-walking and bawling is a natural part of the weaning process."

He said fence-weaning, whereby calves are gate-cut away from their mothers but can still see each other through an electric fence, results in a stress-free weaning with no bawling and no sickness. Unfortunately for graziers who buy sale barn-weaned calves, such a gentle process has not been utilized and the calves arrive at the buyer's ranch in a highly stressed and agitated state of mind. "The first thing you have got to do is to get that stress off of them to keep them healthy," he said. This includes stopping the fence-walking.

Williams said that animal movement creates animal movement and animals will always move in the same direction unless prevented from doing so. In fence-walking the calf in front pulls along the calf behind who in turn pushes the calf in front until the whole group is totally exhausted. He said that walking alongside the calves in the same direction they were going would bring them to a halt.

He said animals always want to know where you are. If you are alongside, they have to slow down to keep you in sight. If you then stop, they will stop, turn and look at you.

Conversely, walking against the direction the animals are moving will speed them up. Animals always want to go in the direction they are headed and they will escape the pressure you are putting on them by speeding up to get by you.

Bud said the absolutely highest stress you can put on a ruminant animal is to get behind them where they can't see you. He said ruminants have their eyes on the sides of their heads and can see almost 360 degrees around them. The one exception is a small area directly behind them. He said you should never be in this blind spot for more than an instant to keep animals calm. "Cattle know they are a prey animal and they absolutely hate to be chased from behind. Humans, on the other hand, are a predator species and absolutely love to chase animals. Therein, lies the source of most of our animal health problems," he said.

Animals should always be driven from the side. He said attempting to drive an animal from behind will always turn the animal around so he can see you. This, in effect, produces the exact opposite result you are trying to produce as the animal will always go in the direction he is headed. Therefore an animal should always be facing the direction you want him to go before putting any pressure on him to get him to move.

If you want an animal to go through a gate, you should stand beside the gate. Once the animal is looking at you and facing the gate, you can step toward him and he will run by you through the open gate to escape your pressure.

When working the drag position behind a herd, the motion should always be back and forth rather than static so the animals always know where you are and don't turn around to try to see you.

Williams said it was easy to work animals stress-free if you understood these concepts.

1. Walking with the animals slows them down.

2. Walking against the direction of the animal speeds them up.

3. Getting behind them in their blind spot sends them into total hysterics.

4. Animals want to go in the direction they are headed.

5. Slower is always faster with animals.

He said the sole standard of productivity at most stocker operations seemed to be how fast one can work an animal. Bud said fast movement and noise puts stress on animals, and most vaccines will not work on stressed animals. He said animals should be worked slowly and in as close to a noise-free environment as possible. Receiving crews should be trained to avoid talking and to use hand signals. All squeeze chutes and hydraulic motors should be snubbed and muffled to work silently.

Bud said he had noticed that as the drugs have gotten better the animal health problems have gotten worse because there is now an almost total reliance on the drugs to keep the animals healthy. "I am not a fan of doctoring. I would rather try to prevent sickness. The two best drugs for calves are feed and water. Most sick calves basically starve themselves to death. You've got to watch and make sure you have seen every calf eating."

"It is more important that you pull and treat animals early than what drug you use. Close observation is the key to a low death loss. If you look at a calf twice, treat him. The real trouble starts if we treat too late. We really want to doctor him the day before he is going to get sick. You need to develop the eye that allows you to see the calf that's going to be sick tomorrow.

"Always ask yourself why an animal got sick. Our job is not just to check for sick animals but to prevent the next one from getting sick."

Just as it is important to stop calves from fence-walking themselves into exhaustion, it is equally important to make sure they get exercise. "I don't like to see calves lying around all day on a straw bed. Walking and exercise are good for them."

Bud said in the winter he used to take the calves out of the feedyard every day and walk them over the frozen pastures for exercise. He said this exercise program had greatly increased the feedyard's average daily gains and the animal's health.

He has little patience with stocker graziers who don't have the "time" to practice a good preventive animal health program and look closely at their calves every day. "If you don't have the time to take care of your animals, go do something else. You can't be too busy if you are going to own cattle."

An avowed animal lover, Bud said he actually preferred the company of animals to people. "Animals learn very fast. People don't. Most ranchers don't want you to teach them something new. They want you to show them how they can keep doing what they are doing and have a different result. This (hope for a different result without any change in action) has been given as the definition of insanity."

Bud Williams said that knowing how to practice time-control grazing through the use of herding was going to increasingly be a requirement of Federal Grazing Leases. He said the ecological benefits of controlling grazing were now widely known but that extensive fence building on Federal Lands in the West would be prohibited by both budgetary and aesthetic concerns.

He said that in extensive environments herding could be just as effective in producing time-controlled grazing as fencing. Thanks to better grazing distribution and utilization, herding can also increase the season-long stocking rate - often dramatically so.

He said cows genetically want to be in a herd. Herding is their primary protection from predators as no predator (other than man) will penetrate a tight herd of animals. Unfortunately, we have taught our animals that being in a herd is a bad thing and a precursor to being trapped in a corral and physically hurt. Therefore, we must re-teach them to form a tight herd.

He said the way to do this was to gather them and put them in a corral and not hurt them. Let them relearn the comfort of being together and then release them. After a few times, the animals learn that being put together, moved and penned together is not a bad thing and the stress of being herded is removed.

Bud said that two things have to happen before you can successfully herd them. One, the animals have to want to be in a herd. And two, the animals have to feel where you want them to be is a nice place.

"We all live where we live because we are comfortable there. If we aren't comfortable, we leave. Animals are the same way," he said.

If all of your animals are grazing in one direction, they aren't going to stay there. Animals that are comfortable and plan to stay, graze facing in different directions.

Bud said the maximum size of your herd will largely be determined by your skill as a grazier and herder. He said herds in excess of 800 to 900 head require a large amount of herding skill to succes