Improving animal wellbeing during husbandry procedures
The Australian red meat industry is working to reduce, refine and replace harmful animal husbandary practices to create better animal welfare outcomes.
Animal husbandry is the science of looking after and breeding farm animals, and covers a wide range of activities related to animal care, health and hygiene.
Which husbandry procedures are used by red meat producers?
The most common beef cattle husbandry techniques include:
Animal husbandry procedure
What it means
Why it's carried out
Castration
Removal of the testicles from male cattle
Controls breeding and ensures that calves are born at the optimum times of year for their welfare. It also reduces aggression and wandering in male animals.
Dehorning
Removal of horns from young cattle
Livestock without horns are less likely to hurt themselves, people or other livestock. Dehorning or disbudding is the process of removing or stopping the growth of horns in livestock. Breeding polled (hornless) livestock removes the need to dehorn or disbud livestock, or trim their horns. The industry has selectively bred out horns for 73% of the national cattle herd.
Branding
Placing a permanent mark on the hide of cattle
Placing a permanent mark on the hide of cattle identifies ownership of cattle. Some states and territories require that cattle must be branded prior to sale. In other states, branding is not required.
Ear tagging
Placing a National Livestock Identification System tag (and possibly a property identification tag) in the ear of the cattle
Ensures lifetime traceability of cattle from farms, feedlots, saleyards to processing plants.
Stuart Tait outlines the husbandry practices undertaken on his cattle farm.
The most common sheep cattle husbandry techniques include:
Animal husbandry procedure
What it means
Why it's carried out
Castration
Removal of the testicles from male sheep
Controls breeding and ensures that lambs are born at the optimum times of year for their welfare. It also reduces aggression and wandering in male animals.
Tail docking
Removal of a portion of a sheep’s tail
Prevents flystrike in the wrinkles in an animal’s skin and may also be required to meet some market requirements.
Mulesing
Removal of strips of wool-bearing skin from around the breech (buttocks and tail) of a sheep
Prevents flystrike in the wrinkles in an animal’s skin in the breech area.
Ear marking
A cut or mark in the ear of lambs that shows ownership, year of birth or gender
Indicates ownership, year of birth or the gender of individual sheep.
Ear tagging
Placing a National Livestock Identification System tag (and possibly a property identification tag) in the ear of sheep
Ensures lifetime traceability of sheep from farms, feedlots, saleyards to processing plants. Tags provide provenance of animal care and enables tracking of disease outbreaks if required.
The Australian red meat industry is focused on improving animal welfare during routine animal husbandry procedures. Taking a ‘reduce, refine and replace’ approach, the highest priority is to replace aversive procedures with stress-free, non-invasive alternatives.
An example of this is using genetics to breed out the poll gene in cattle so that dehorning is no longer required. Genetic tools have recently become available to allow breeders to identify cattle that will give calves without horns. The poll gene marker test enables producers to accurately breed out horns from their herd, removing the need to dehorn.
If replacing procedures isn’t feasible, second tier research aims to minimise pain of aversive procedures using pain relief. The use of pain relief for routine animal husbandry procedures is a key area of focus with the beef industry working towards 100% use of pain relief by 2030.
Thirdly, the industry aims to refine existing procedures by applying a less stressful method in a less stressful way. For example, using devices that provide an anaesthetic as well as analgesic to mitigate pain and stress during castration and tail docking.
Did you know?
The Australian beef industry is committed to the pursuit of non-invasive replacements for surgical procedures and in the interim, aspires to 100% use of pain relief for these procedures by 2030. (Source)
Over the past 10 years, an increasing number of wool and sheep meat producers have been able to cease mulesing (the removal of skin around a lamb’s breech and tail), due largely to the shift away from breeds, such as Merino sheep, that are highly susceptible to flystrike.
Currently 80% of sheep producers are using appropriate pain relief for mulesing
These days, most cattle are bred without horns to reduce the need to dehorn calves – a practice which helps prevent livestock injuring themselves, other livestock and human handlers. Almost 72% of calves born into seedstock herds in 2022 were naturally polled (hornless). Seedstock refers to the population of animals used for breeding. (Source)
