Safe Cattle Working Equipment

Chemical engineers build and operate plants and processes which produce desirable chemical products. We coexist with countless things to which chemical engineers have made their contribution. The plastic in the keys on your computer keyboard, the paint on your walls, the food you eat, the car you drive, the fuel in its tank, and the electricity available at your wall outlet are but a few. Yes, there are chemical engineers that clean up messes left by some of these processes to make or keep the air we breath and the water we drink clean.

We follow a general methodology to to arrive at processes that can be operated to keep operators and neighbors safe. In fact, its really nice when these processes function without the neighbors ever becoming aware of the plants existence, having any health effects associated with the process, or having Erin Brockovich knock at their door. That means you never smell the existence of a pulp and paper mill or find out that your house was built on ground contaminated my some hazardous chemical operation.

One step in this process analyzes the safety of the operation. Various techniques are used, but its purpose is to place systems and limits in place which insure that limiting accident scenarios never happen. As an example, the recent difficulties at the Japanese nuclear reactors had a safety analysis. It was pointed out over twenty years ago, that there were deficiencies in their design because a tsunami beyond design parameters could credibly occur. It did, and the world found out about it.

I followed this process when considering beginning a cattle operation. The hazards inherent to a cattle operation are mostly toward the workers. Cattle and horses can rearrange their feet much faster than we can react. That's what makes rodeo exciting. The process of producing beef requires that man and animal come into close contact, and hopefully this can occur without things turning “western” every time. Bucking horses and bulls and running calves should be the exception and not the rule. I personally don't need that excitement.

Cattle and horses require vaccinations against diseases which are part of their everyday life. Numerous products and systems exist to insure that this can happen safely for both cow and cowboy. Since vaccinations must be given repeatedly throughout a cows life, it should be a design criteria that each cow can pass smoothly and comfortably through the system every time. It never works out well when the cowboy or veterinarian triggers the self defense instincts of cow or horse. Just like people, some cows activate their defenses a little faster than others, so you need equipment in-place that insures the safety of man and animal when (not if) it happens. This is design criteria number 1. It is a must.

The system is not constrained to only when man and cow are in close proximity. You have to be able to get a bunch of cows from pasture to a place where they can be vaccinated, preg checked, branded or doctored. Here is an example of a livestock working system: http://www.wwmanufacturing.com/ez.html While the working system provides a barrier, it still requires procedures to use all the facets safely, as well as getting the cattle safely into the squeeze chute one at a time with minimal stress to worker and cow.

Temple Grandin, a professor at Colorado State University, has influenced the design of such systems from the cow's point of view. She found that working systems can be barriers instead of facilitators to working cattle in a safe, effective manner. The result has been new systems which greatly improve moving cattle through, as well as, simple retrofits to existing systems.

We have worked cows for over ten years in the above system. We have suffered no injuries requiring medical attention nor have we lost any work time from its use. The cattle are used to it, and two of us can easily work 100 cattle a day in it.