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Low Stress Cattle Handling Tool
Dr. Joseph Stookey, a cattleman and recently retired professor from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, says one trick that works great to calm down nervous cattle when restraining them for dehorning or other procedures is a device called the Easy Boss E.
It’s an “oral distraction” tool that can reduce fear and stress when the animal is in the chute. “Don Findlay, a cattle veterinarian from Manitoba, took this idea and created a tool that is now being marketed. Don is a graduate of our college, and went to Australia after graduating in 1978. About 10 years ago he called me to tell me about this idea. He’d found a small group of producers in Australia using this thing and wanted to know if I thought there was anything to it,” says Stookey.
This oral distraction works well for cattle because chewing is a natural behavior. If there is something foreign in the mouth, they focus on chewing it, figuring it out, trying to get rid of it, etc. It can distract them from pain and or various procedures being done to them.
Don Findlay is now marketing this tool. “We did an experiment to see how well it worked - while freeze branding we used it on half the animals. We measured heart rate, how much they struggled, etc. The animals that had the distraction had lower heart rate and less struggling than the ones without it,” says Stookey.
Easy Boss E is marketed in the U.S. and Canada and many other countries and listed for $82.40 on Partnar Animal Health website.
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Partnar Animal Health, 2014 Holland Ave, Unit 227, Port Huron, Mich. 48060 (ph 866-690-4998; www.partnaranimalhealth.com).



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2021 - Volume #45, Issue #4