Behavior

Understanding how animals choose what to eat, based on learning and how their bodies work, will help you see why your animals are eating what they’re eating and give you a leg up on figuring out how to help them do more for you.

Dr. Temple Grandin shares her thoughts about the Stockmanship Journal’s analysis of her handling facilities design.

This is the final excerpt in this series. Authors Whit Hibbard and Dr. Lynn Locatelli conclude that investing in training for anyone handling and moving livestock is cheaper and more effective in the long run than trying to create and install expensive handling equipment that doesn’t necessarily do the job.

You don’t need to spend your hard earned cash on fancy facilities. Here Whit Hibbard and Dr. Lynn Locatelli continue their analysis highlighting why inexpensive, easy to use BudBoxes make more sense than high dollar facilities.

In Part 4 of their analysis, Whit Hibbard and Dr. Lynn Locattelli describe how these kinds of facilities respond better to animal behavior than those suggested by Dr. Temple Grandin, and why they make your life as a livestock handler easier.

Dr. Temple Grandin designed livestock handling facilities with curves and solid sided tubs to keep livestock moving forward without fear. But analysis by Whit Hibbard and Dr. Lynn Locatelli shows that livestock don’t respond well in these facilities. Here’s Part 3 of their analysis.

Dr. Temple Grandin designed livestock handling facilities with solid sides based on her theory that they prevent animals from seeing outside distractions. In this part of their analysis of these kinds of handling facilities, Hibbard and Locatelli demonstrate how animals move much more easily through open-sided facilities.

Do you think you need a new cattle handling facility? Are you trying to figure out what will work best for you? Here’s an analysis of the Grandin system and how it matches animal behavior in action.

In Part II of this series summarizing Bob Budd’s lessons learned, he describes how understanding and using an animal’s natural behavior makes it easier to move them and use them to improve landscapes and create habitat.

Researchers at Utah State University have conducted several studies that show that tannins in forages can reduce parasite loads in livestock, and that animals will choose to eat more foods with tannins when they are infested with parasites.  Most shrubs contain tannins, and tannins can also be found in sudangrass, birdsfoot and big trefoil, sorghum, […]

We are used to thinking about forage type, nutrition and quantity as we raise our animals, but we overlook what animals might be learning from Mom and herd mates. Since what a young animal learns about food has life-long consequences, knowing more about this process can help us be more successful managers.

Here are some of the posts on the Kennedy Ranch Facebook page from Sue Kennedy’s work teaching cattle to eat leafy spurge on their ranch in Lamoille, Nevada. Sue says that the cattle do well eating the spurge on their first rotation through a pasture. But 14 days later they tend to eat around the […]

Sometimes cows eat rabbits too! Here’s a look at some unusual animal eating behavior and why they choose to eat things we wouldn’t have imagined for them. If your livestock are eating strange things, you’ll learn why here.

William “Willie” Gibson, a board member of the Vermont Grass Farmers Association, and a dairy and livestock farm advisor for the Northeast Organic Farming Association wrote me a question in response to an article about teaching cows to weeds: “This surely is fascinating, Kathy.  One question that popped into my head when reading your theory […]

One of the common questions I get from folks who hear me talk about training livestock to eat weeds is whether or not it is a good way to control weeds.  For the answer, I’ll share what was in my head when I started trying to figure out the process for teaching animals to try […]