Home Livestock The Best Cattle Handling Facilities May Not Be Those Designed by Temple...

The Best Cattle Handling Facilities May Not Be Those Designed by Temple Grandin

1
1090

This ground-breaking series of articles came to us in May of 2014 from The Stockmanship Journal and authors Whit Hibbard and Dr. Lynn Locatelli.   After reading it, one of our On Pasture readers wrote to say “We renovated our livestock holding area with the Bud Box after your great series of discussions. THANK YOU … handling is so much safer now.”

The authors decided to write this series because after many years of experience in livestock handling, and in helping producers, feedlots, and other processing facilities, they noticed that the animal behavior they observed, and the handling facilities that worked best, differed greatly from the behavior Dr. Temple Grandin described, and the facilities she designed.  They decided to carefully analyze cattle behavior and their response to handling facilities and the result was this series of articles.  Their conclusion was that Grandin’s curved, closed sided facilities increase animal stress and increase difficulties for handlers. In this series you’ll find pictures, videos and suggestions for facilities that work best for cattle handling.

We’d love to hear more from you about your own observations, and whether you make changes based on what you learn from this series.  While comments are already closed on the individual articles, you can leave comments with this post.

Will Temple Grandin's Handling Facilities Work For You

 

Get Rid of Solid Sided Handling Facilities

 

Ditch Those Curved Facilities and Tubs

 

Straight Open Sided Chutes Best

 

BudBoxes Best

 

Good Stockmanship Makes All The Difference

 

 

Before publishing the articles, Hibbard and Locatelli contacts Temple Grandin, shared the draft with her, and asked if she’d like to respond.  That response is included below.  What was interesting to Rachel and I, is that many more people read her response than looked at the article series.

Grandins Response

Previous articleSnowmen Beware!
Next articlePortable Panels for Inexpensive Livestock Handling
Whit Hibbard
Whit is a fourth generation Montana rancher who spent aobut 38 years handling cattle conventionally before making the paradigm shift to low-stress livestock handling (LSLH) as taught by Bud Williams. For the past 10 years he has studied and practice LSLH, and shares his knowledge in clinics, onsite consultations, and articles. He began publishing the Stockmanship Journal in 2012. It is the definitive source for quality information on stockmanship. Though the importance of stockmanship is becoming well recognized, until this Journal, there was no professional publication addressing the subject. Hibbard began publishing the Journal in January of 2012 to provide a consistent and efficient way to share information on stockmanship, and to serve as a forum for open, intelligent and informed dialogue. The Journal is a means for improving the level of discourse and the discipline of stockmanship. It is published twice a year in electronic form and includes articles written by experts in the field.

1 COMMENT

  1. The Bud Box system is cheaper and easier to build. Many times just a few alterations to your present pens will be required. Use your imagination when making a change. If the layout is not quite perfect your stockmanship can make the difference.

Comments are closed.