Good foot crush eases pressure

摘要

Foot trimming is one of the most important jobs on a dairy farm, but too often the job is made challenging because the crush is not correctly positioned. A cow faced -with a solid wall as she enters the crush will panic as there is no visible escape route. This will make the operator's job more difficult. DairyCo extension officer, Richard Davies, says a crush should always point to where the cow wants to go and not a wall. "There needs to be a holding pen and a race leading up to the crush and alsoout of it, as well as an obvious exit route so that once the job is done, the animal can exit immediately," he says.