Reading Time: 5 minutes The Beef Cattle Research Council has updated the pain mitigation section of its website. The following is an edited version of that page, which also contains videos and links to further articles. Consumer pressure to avoid painful practices on cattle when possible — and to reduce pain when castration, dehorning, or branding are necessary — […] Read more
Beef website offers insights and tips on pain mitigation
Cattle’s experience with pain is not fully understood, but research on minimizing pain is steadily advancing
Livestock care in the spotlight
Reading Time: < 1 minute A low-stress cattle-handling and body condition-scoring workshop; understanding animal welfare; and a diversified livestock panel will be part of the 2015 Annual Livestock Care Conference on March 26-27 in Calgary. The conference, hosted by Alberta Farm Animal Care, is intended to address challenges and trends in animal care. Other topics include social media in animal […] Read more
Pain mitigation in livestock conference
Reading Time: < 1 minute The Antimicrobial Stewardship & Pain Mitigation in Livestock: Current Developments Conference will take place Jan. 27, 2015 in Olds at the Pomeroy Inn & Suites. The conference, which is free, will feature presentations on pain mitigation from a welfare standpoint, the management perspective, respiratory pathogens, pain mitigation for livestock, swine, and horses, antimicrobial resistance and poultry, […] Read more
Study says healthy cattle can manage taxing transport
Researchers find well-conditioned cattle bear up well during transport
Reading Time: 4 minutes A prominent animal welfare group calls it “transport torture,” but a new study has found conditions inside livestock trailers don’t normally have a significant impact on animal health. The Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada study looked at trailer microclimates during cattle transport. “We thought they might have an impact on the health and morbidity rates once […] Read more
Don’t wing it — or refuse comment — if your farm makes the six o’clock news
Consultant and media trainer Grant Ainsley has some basic advice for dealing with the media
Reading Time: 2 minutes If the media ever shows up at your farm, treat them like you would a “big hungry dog,” says PR consultant and media trainer Grant Ainsley. “You have to feed it, or it will howl, bark and eventually bite,” he said. “You can’t always control what happens, but you can control your reaction.” The worst […] Read more
The cattle industry hasn’t fully embraced animal welfare
The cattle sector has come a long way but there are still areas to be addressed and it should be leading the way
Reading Time: 3 minutes The children and I have a map marked with every road I drove in the 20 years in the 1980s and 1990s I spent speaking about animal welfare in Canada. There were a few empty spots, but those travels included hundreds of farm stops and thousands of participants. It was my mission to bring the […] Read more
Paying it forward — family’s donation to create animal welfare ‘win-wins’
Already a leader in the field, the U of C’s vet school will expand research to help both producers and the animals in their care
Reading Time: 3 minutes It is, by any measure, a lot of money. But her family’s $5-million donation to the University of Calgary’s faculty of veterinary medicine for animal welfare research is money well spent, says Cochrane-area rancher Wynne Chisholm. “We love animals and have a soft spot for cows. Cow-calf is underserved in terms of research,” said Chisholm, […] Read more
Transparency key to dealing with animal rights activists
Doing the ‘right thing,’ and owning up when things go wrong, should be at the core of any livestock operation — just ask the Calgary Stampede
Reading Time: 2 minutes As the battle over animal welfare heats up, ‘the greatest outdoor show on earth’ has some advice on responding to activists. “We have been on the ‘bleeding edge of the wedge’ in terms of activists targeting the Stampede because of the audience that we deal with,” said Bonni Clark, communications adviser for the Calgary Stampede. […] Read more
Western Hog Exchange to producers: Stop shipping injured animals
Chair Brent Moen says facility will now ‘walk the walk’ on animal care, and that includes cracking down on shipments of sick or injured animals
Reading Time: 3 minutes There’s no doubt in Brent Moen’s mind that Western Hog Exchange staff accused of animal welfare violations behaved inappropriately. “We were talking the talk, but not walking the walk,” said the chairman of the farmer-owned hog facility in Red Deer. “We had a significant disconnect between our procedure manual and actual implementation. We broke six […] Read more
New York Colony’s ‘furnished’ poultry housing wins sustainability awards
Furnished housing provides a more natural open environment, with nesting areas, scratch pads, and perches
Reading Time: 2 minutes State-of-the-art “furnished housing” for poultry has won the New York Hutterite Colony the inaugural Canadian Poultry Sustainability Award for both the table egg industry and the overall poultry industry honours. The Lethbridge-area colony was praised for being a progressive and forward-thinking egg farm, with a strong commitment to animal welfare and environmentally responsible farming practices. […] Read more
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