Effect of Solid Side Chute Design for Individual Handling of Hanwoo (Korean Cattle)

摘要

Moving behavior of groups of Hanwoo was observed when solid side was applied along the straight single file chute. Dark blue liners (PVC coated fabric) were hung on the outer side along the steel bars of chute to block vision of cattle. Ten animals were grouped together in a batch to move through chute to the restrainter. Movement of animals through chutes were significantly faster when solid side with liners were applied than when they had open vision of flight zone. And the difference in movement time between of solid side and open side was even greater in a longer chute than in a shorter one. From the experiment with longer chute, we could not find any significant differences between presence or absence of solid sides in the time spent for the leaading cattle to enter the squeeze chute from crowd pen. But the average time spent for movement from squeeze gait to restrainter was 22.78 ±1.15 seconds with solid sides, which was much shorter than with open sides (40.56 ± 4.46 seconds). Time required for batch of animals to move from crowd pen to restrainter and exit was much faster with solid sides than with open sides: 96.33 ± 3.98 seconds vs. 121.89 ±5.54 seconds from leading animal to enter the squeeze chute until the last animal of the batchto exit restrainter and 104.56 ±3.89 vs. 131.22 ±6.42 seconds for the whole batch of animals to enter the squeeze chute and exit restrainter. Another experiment with shorter chute showed that animals balked to right angled edge of the crowed pen before entering squeeze chute. We could not find any differences in time requred for the leading animal to enter the crowd pen from holding pen. Total time spent from entrance of leading animal to crowd pen until the last animal to exit restrainter was shorter with solid sides than with open sides: 177.44 ±5.20 seconds vs. 193.44 ±7.46 seconds.