Young animals from suckler cow husbandry often have stress when they come to the slaughterhouse because everything is unfamiliar and they had a very free life before. The hypothesis of this project is that animals that have already learned on the farm to walk through panel aisles and to stand in a treatment stall or on a scale have less stress at the slaughterhouse than animals that have not learned this. To test this hypothesis, at least 5 Naturabeef animals on each of 5 suckler cow farms will be conditioned 3 times in their life. Therefore, the animals are herded through a panel aisle to a treatment stall with the method “low stress stockmanship” and released when they stand still. When these animals are slaughtered, FiBL observes their behavior, how they are herded into the stunning box and analyzes the stress parameters in their blood. These parameters are compared with those of Naturabeef animals that have been on the same transporter without conditioning. If the expected differences become apparent, this method will be recommended to suckler cow farms in the future.
Project coordination
