The good old days of cowboy rope and tie branding are facing a nation wide overhaul with Australian cattlemen leaning towards low stress, safe cattle handling tools no matter the size of their operation.
Colin Hammond, Catagra Group, Caloundra, is backing innovation in agriculture with Kansas based silencer hydraulic crush and turret gate systems designed for maximum work efficiency.
Mr Hammond said such cattle handling tools were new to Australian soil but had been proven in America for 20 years.
“With Australia’s skilled labour shortage so high and workplace health and safety so relevant it’s time we looked at ways of competing with current demands,” Mr Hammond said.
“We needed to get smarter with our ways of working and the silencer crush alone has many features unavailable in existing Australian manual crushes.”
Mr Hammond went on to describe the silencer crush’s ability to engage an angled body squeeze to prevent cattle splaying their legs and a forward catching head bail with left and right directional head squeezes for better staff access.
“The head is the danger area, it’s where your staff are working to mouth, tag and vaccinate,” he said.
“Rather than catching an animal on its neck we catch behind the ears to open up the neck and simultaneously engage the angle squeeze to tighten their feet up.
“The problem with Australian crushes is they’re all too wide so cattle rush in with their feet apart allowing too much bodily movement.
“The real key in holding a beast still is to gain control of the body- when you get body control you get head control.”
True to its name, Mr Hammond said the lack of steel on steel in the silencer crush addressed the “rattle and bang” so common in Australian stock yards.
“Talk to stockmen of the older generation- they’re half deaf. Go and swing on their old crushes and you’ll learn why,” he said.
“Not only is the noise harmful to staff, it doesn’t encourage quiet cattle.
“Cattle steam through the crush, make a crash as they’re caught before they rattle out again and they won’t be any better behaved next time, it only gets worse.”
Mr Hammond said while the benefits of low stress cattle handling were obvious, it was not easy changing the mindsets of seasoned cattlemen.
“In the four years the crush has been available in Australia there are about 50 on the ground and that’s climbing,” he said.
“People have some very fixed ideas but the results speak for themselves.
“You can take a whole labour unit out with this crush and we’ve had properties tell us they’re processing cattle 50 per cent faster. If you apply that to labour costs there’s a saving of $100,000 over the life of the crush.”
Like the silencer crush, the turret gate eliminates the need for a staff member to work in the forcing yard behind the race with a hydraulic remote controlled gate taking people out of the flight zone.
Studies show most injuries happen in this high impact area with cattle and gates flying back over the top of staff.
The turret gate ‘paddles’ cattle around to the race entrance and shuttles back to pick up subsequent lots, allowing staff to work from a safe distance and therefore avoid applying human pressure.
Mr Hammond said innovative handling tools meant experienced labour was no longer necessary and with crushes starting at about $30,000, savings were substantial.
“It works out at about 10 cents per head to process an animal through the crush but saving a labour unit and speeding the flow of cattle is invaluable to most producers.”
For more information on silencer technology visit http://www.catagra.com/.
