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.

A Chemical Engineer Looks at the Cattle Business

Engineers can be an odd lot. One professor described it with what people see when a car rolls down a hill. Most people see a car rolling down a hill. Some will jump to where its going and what it will run into when it stops rolling. The engineer sees it with all the various force vectors, and all their associated parameters. He wants to measure the slope of the hill along the path, the pressure in the tires, etc. The engineer will predict how fast it is going when it hits the grove of trees, and how far into the grove the car will travel along with a statistical variance that accounts for how accurately he knows the various parameters.

Chemical engineers concern themselves with the processes to take raw feed stocks and turn them into some desirable product. For example, taking crude oil and making gasoline, diesel fuel, plastic, and a myriad of other things. In this case, I'm looking at making beef. The beef business is compartmentalized. The rancher's product is usually a live animal in the form of bulls, steers, heifers and cows. Most calves are raised with the eventual end product of a medium rare steak on a plate. Some are raised to become breeding stock to make steak or more breeding stock.

I will constrain the discussion to the cow-calf producer. That is the beginning of the process and the segment of the business that I chose. The product is a weaned calf ready for the next stage. The first product in this stage is conceiving calves in cows. The general approach is to mix enough cows and bulls together to get every cow pregnant. Nourish the cows until they give birth. Nourish the cows while they feed their calves, wean the calves, finish preparing calves for the next step. The simplified flowchart looks like this:

Of course, this flowchart can be much more complex. Cows can be bred naturally, by artificial insemination, and embryo transfer. Cows are ready to breed sometimes within 23 days (cycle time) and mostly within 46 days after giving birth. Gestation is approximately 9 months, so you aim to have them give birth at the same time every year, and you control that by when breeding can occur.  Nursing the current calf and breeding occur simultaneously, and not necessarily in a discrete, step-wise fashion.

Cows and bulls are never the same from one individual to another. If you have a herd of 100 cows, then you have the equivalent of 100 separate plants that turn grass, water and oxygen into beef. Each “plant” is more or less capable of producing beef. Some can do it at a pound a day while others can accomplish 5 pounds a day. Some may require 20 pounds of feed per day to achieve an output of 1 pound per day of calf weight gain. Some may take 50 pounds of feed to produce a calf gain of 5 pounds per day.. In general, higher calf weight gains require a higher feed rate.

The process variables inherent in chemical plants exist for cows, too. When ambient temperatures are cold, then they must convert more grass into in energy to stay warm. When its hot, they must consume more water (up to 25 gallons a day in my experience) to stay cool, and provide for digestion. They may spend time finding places to stand or lay down to remain comfortable rather than eat. Radiant (sun) and natural and forced (wind) convective heat transfer along with evaporative heat loss plays an important role. The ruminant digestive process generates heat even before absorption of food into the body, so there is an exothermic reaction going on in the rumen. Some breeds of cows are better adapted to warmer climates while others work well in cold conditions. Some do not work well in lower pressure zones (read high altitude).

When a plant stops producing either you replace parts to allow it to produce or you take it all apart and sell the parts for recycle. Its no different with cattle. When a cow doesn't breed back its an indication that something about that “plant” isn't functioning well with the inputs. It can simply be age, poor teeth, poor hooves, or it can be that it doesn't agree with the environment or the feed. You sell the “plant,” and either keep one of the heifer calves or buy a completely new “plant.” By selling the cows that don't produce you develop a set of “plants” that get along well with the environment and feed.

Cows, calves and bulls require preventative and corrective maintenance. Cattle live in an environment in which various pathogens grow. Some are lethal, but most result in reduced production either in calf growth or inability to breed again. When a calf dies you not only lose the income from the sale, but also the money spent in feeding its mother. Cattle are vaccinated for the most common diseases and given supplements like salt containing trace minerals (preventative maintenance), but they still get sick and must be “doctored”(corrective maintenance). Corrective maintenance not only occurs with respect to individual cattle, but also with respect to the herd as a whole. When cows or calves get sick that is an indication that the they have not adapted or their bodies cannot resist viruses or bacteria present in their surroundings. The herd is corrected by selling individuals that get sick.

The product can be prepared with respect to quality. Vaccination sites develop pockets in the meat, so injections should be given in the neck,. Brands can can mess up the hide for leather purposes, so you brand in less valuable locations (mine is right hip). Meat is sold as select, choice or prime (select has the least inter-muscular marbling with fat), and is ranked as to yield grade from one to five (the lower the better). Grass finished beef contains all the omega 3 fats (cancer fighting, good for you). Grain finishing replaces all the omega 3 fats with omega 6 fats within 45 days. You can target the sector of the market with your herd. It is possible to achieve greater than 90% choice and better with yield grade 1, but grain finished. Preparing heifers and bulls for breed stock can be great genetic work, but the breeder needs to keep an eye on what the market wants or be able to sell the market on what they need.

Breeders, through breed associations, track between ten and fifteen characteristics that are quantified as Expected Progeny Differences. For example, cows that had a high birth weight bred to bulls with high birth weight will likely produce calves of high birth weight, which is not necessarily a good thing because the cows can have problems giving birth to heavy calves. A higher percentage of Caesarian deliveries can result, which means higher veterinarian costs. Breeders have “plants” in their pastures that are measured for a large number of characteristics. It becomes a very complicated decision as to which bulls should be combined with them. Emphasizing one characteristic can have unintended long term consequences. If you want it bad, you get it bad. If you want it worse, you get it worse. Embryo transfer and cloning produce the intended consequence, but they always have weaknesses which may appear for certain users of the product.

Of course, all of this can come to nothing if the bull is laying in the shade two miles from the cow that is ready to be bred.

And you thought that the life of a cowboy was a simple one.

What I've Got to Say

Engineer and cowboy? How can these two possibly supplement one another? Maybe you can see how engineering can help a cattle operation, but even this transfer, in my experience, will probably surprise you.

I suspect that you're sceptical about what a man riding a horse while trailing a herd of cows could possibly teach an engineer, especially a chemical engineer. That is the primary purpose of the posts you will be reading.

As head of our local office, I signed my own lay-off papers at the end of a project. That was 14 years ago. Yeah, I was pushed that direction by other factors. I worked for Stone & Webster. They were headed for an Enron-like failure. Regulations were multiplying by hundreds of thousands of pages a year. California alone accounted for 100,000 pages of new environmental regs per year. I had five offers of other positions with other organizations. Yet, I chose to leave engineering. For many, this would be a questionable decision, but it offered the opportunity to do some real engineering instead of trying to keep pace with regulatory environment.

You need to understand other aspects that led me this way. I enjoy challenge. I'm confident taking on even unknown businesses, and that I can manage the variables. I am compelled to to acquire new capabilities. I solve problems – technical or organizational. (Believe me, ranching offers problems to solve every day.) Even afflicted with these characteristics, I have enjoyed success, which encourages the confidence.

Before I get to the things that ranching can teach an engineer, you'll need to find out what I learned from ranching and what the engineer did as a rancher. Here we go …..