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Latest Transport Research & New Products for Animal Transport

Dr. Drewe FERGUSON

Stream Leader Animal Health and Welfare

CSIRO Livestock Systems

FD McMaster Laboratories

Locked Bag 1

Armidale NSW 2350 Australia

Tel: +61 2 67761354

Fax: +61 2 67761333

drewe.ferguson@csiro.au

Dr. Drewe Ferguson is a principal research scientist with the CSIRO Livestock Industries (CLI). He is the Stream Leader of CLIs Animal Health and Welfare Stream and Deputy CEO of the Co-operative Research Centre for Beef Genetic Technologies.  His earlier research focused on the quantification of genetic, pre-slaughter and post-slaughter factors affecting beef palatability. 

More recently he has examined the behavioural and physiological responses to stress in ruminants and applied this in the improvement of farm animal management and practices.  His current research interests include objective assessment of animal welfare, evaluation of the benefits of genetic selection for temperament on animal productivity and welfare and quantifying the welfare impacts of long distance transport of livestock.

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“Research on Road

Transport Duration”

Dr. Drewe FERGUSON

Stream Leader Animal Health & Welfare

CSIRO Livestock Systems

Australian livestock road transport practices are different to those in many other countries, due to the extensive nature of our farming conditions and the distances involved.  This has prompted differences in welfare codes relating to transport. For example, in contrast to European welfare requirements, cattle and sheep are permitted to be transported for longer maximum durations.  However, prior to 2005, there was little scientific evidence of the welfare of cattle and sheep trucked under Australian conditions.  Consequently, a joint Meat and Livestock Australia and CSIRO Livestock Industries project was initiated to scientifically examine the animal welfare outcomes of Australian livestock transport practices.  A key focus of this research was the welfare impacts of transport duration in both cattle and sheep. 

Under the Model Codes of Practice for the Land Transportation of Cattle and Sheep, the maximum allowable duration for mature non-lactating cattle and sheep is 36 h.  However, this can be extended to 48 h if the animals are not displaying obvious signs of fatigue, thirst or distress and if the extension allows the journey to be completed within 48 h. To examine the effects of transport duration, healthy, mature cattle and sheep were transported on commercial livestock vehicles between 6 and 48 h (cattle), or 12 and 48 h (sheep).  The changes in bodyweight, lying behaviour, haematology and blood chemistry post-transport and during a 72 h recovery period were determined.  The greatest difference between treatments was observed immediately on arrival, although this was not large for some measurements and generally still within normal physiological values. Moreover, the transport-mediated changes had generally resolved after 72 h post-transport.  The results of these studies generally indicate that healthy cattle and sheep that have unrestricted access to food or water prior to transport can be transported with best practice for 6, 12, 30 or 48 h duration without major compromise to their welfare.  It is important to emphasise in the context of transport duration,  that the physiological condition of the livestock and the expected transport conditions (weather, road types etc) must always be taken into consideration in the journey planning.

 PowerPoint Presentation

Sharon E. CREGIER,

Ph.D., F.I.A.S.H. (Hon., Edin.)

North American Editor

Equine Behaviour Forum

Cheiron’s Court

P.O. Box 1100

Montague,

Prince Edward Island 

Canada  C0A 1R0

Tel: +1 902.838.4017

scregier@pei.sympatico.ca

www.cheironscourt.ca

Dr. Cregier has followed horse transport issues for three decades.  Her review, published in the November – December 1982 issue of the Jl. of Equine Veterinary Science, served as the springboard for subsequent research around the world.

She is particularly grateful to New Zealand’s David Holmes for the development of rear face loading and transport of horses.  A groundbreaking improvement, which meets OIE (World Organization for Animal Health) standards for horse and human safety, it allows women and children to load and unload their own mounts.

The University of Sydney, Australia played a pivotal role in pointing out the need for revising standard transport practices.  In 1990 D. J. Racklyeft and D. N. Love confirmed the importance of Holmes’ insistence on transport which allows horses to lower their heads at will.

Dr. Cregier has published two books and over 2000 articles in refereed journals and the popular press.  She is listed in the Consultants and Consulting Organizations Directory, Who’s Who in American Education, and Who’s Who in Animal Transport.  She is a member of the Animal (Air) Transportation Association, the Animal Behaviour Society, the International Society for Applied Ethology, and the World Farriers Association.

She received the AATA Animal Welfare Award in 2003.  She campaigns against the cosmetic amputation of horses’ tails, and is compiling a biography of horseman J.S. Rarey, and the history of horse transport by air.

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“Horse Transport

Practices: Prescriptive

or Preventive?”

Sharon CREGIER, Ph.D., F.I.A.S.H. (Hon., Edin.)

North American Editor

Equine Behaviour Forum

Many horses today are transported in equipment meant to carry dead weight, not live weight. The horse is expected to adapt to trailers essentially unchanged from farm wagons. Even when transported in farm wagons at slower speeds, problems of loading and unloading confronted the horse’s 18th and 19th century handlers.

Twentieth century handlers, using trailers or vans hauled at speed, compounded these earlier problems. The horses were now expected to keep their balance as these powerful engines accelerated, decelerated, turned, braked and overtook or were overtaken by vacuum draft creating transporters. As horses lost their balance, tow vehicles lost control.

From the beginning of horse transport history, attempts to ameliorate these problems were prescriptive, not preventive. If a horse did not load, coercive techniques were applied. As many horses arrived damaged in poll or legs or pasterns, equipment was prescribed to lessen the damage. Medications and bran mashes were employed to sedate, or boost immune systems suffering from transit stress, or to prevent impaction colic thought to be induced by transport.

In the 1960s, two men – David J. Holmes of New Zealand and Wentworth Tellington of California – independently asked: Are we fitting the hoof to the shoe or the shoe to the hoof? They concluded that current transport practices did not accommodate a horse’s fear of losing its ability to effortlessly balance, or of being approached from the rear. Tellington, West Point Military Academy instructor, competitor across the states in dressage and endurance riding, and consultant to the American Association of Equine Practitioners, designed a van to preserve a horse’s balance and prevent injuries.

Engineer, horseman, former pilot, farrier, and heavy goods vehicle instructor and builder, Holmes designed the first rear facing rear loading platform/ramp trailer. Its current design is the only trailer in the world to meet OIE (World Organization for Animal Health) recommendations for maximum handler and horse safety at all times during transport.

This presentation reviews some of the results of poor transport practices. It outlines the practice of rear face transport as it affects the private horse owner with children. The applications for commercial hauling are illustrated by AATA member, Jim O’Brien.  

PowerPoint Presentation

Dr. Angela GREEN

Assistant Professor

University of Illinois,

  1304 W. Pennsylvania Ave

Urbana, IL 61801 USA

Tel: +1-217-244-4228

Fax:  +1-217-244-0323

angelag@illinois.edu

http://abe.illinois.edu/faculty/A_Green

Angela Green is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  Her appointment responsibilities are equally divided between research and teaching.  She is currently establishing a research program focused on controlled environment engineering, animal responses to environmental factors, animal-environment interactions, and animal welfare.  The primary goals of her laboratory are: to develop methods for measuring behavioral and physiological feedback from animals, to develop methods for measuring and quantifying environmental conditions, to assess animal-environment interactions, and to assess housing, husbandry, and welfare using a systematic approach.

Dr. Green completed her doctoral degree (’08) in Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering at Iowa State University, where she was supported as a National Science Foundation PhD Graduate Fellow.  The focus of her dissertation research emphasized systematic assessment of laying hen housing for improved hen welfare.  She studied animal behavior assessment methods in 2005 at Silsoe Research Institute in Bedfordshire, England, assessing tolerance of atmospheric ammonia in laboratory mice.  She is originally from Greenville, Kentucky and earned her BS (’02) and MS (’04) in Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering from the University of Kentucky, with an emphasis on controlled environments and measuring physiological responses of transported horses. 

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“Animal-Environment

Interactions During

Transport ”

Dr. Angela GREEN

Assistant Professor

University of Illinois

A scientific approach to assess animal welfare during transport and to identify important features of the transport environment may offer a method for establishing consistent and sound protocols for animal husbandry during transport.  The associated challenges include identifying quantitative measures, developing reliable methods for their measurement during transport, and designing studies to yield meaningful results from which useful conclusions may be drawn.

Characterizing the transport environment is important to understand the conditions in which the animals are confined, and may include thermal comfort, air quality, sound, lighting, space, and interaction with other animals.  Understanding the transport environment is only part of the information needed to assess effects of transport, however.

Animal feedback responses can offer insight to the environment in which the animals are housed.  Feedback may consist of both behavioral and physiological responses.  Behavioral measures include activity time budgets, postures, and instances of aggression or stereotypical actions.  Physiological measures include core body temperature, heart rate, a variety of chemical and hormonal responses, pulmonary function, and disease prevalence. 

Some measurements may be taken before and after transport, but it is often desirable to measure during transport.  An ideal measurement technology would be automatic, dependable, reliable, robust, and self-contained.  This allows for measurement without the intervention and confounding factor of human presence in the unpredictable and sometimes harsh conditions of an animal transport environment.  Measuring feedback responses of animals during transport creates an additional challenge because timely access to the animals is prohibited in many cases.  This mandates that equipment also consider safety to a different degree than required for laboratory studies.

Overall, limited research has been reported to quantify, characterize, and model transport environments.  Of published transport studies, most focused on road transport of livestock and poultry in commercial agricultural scenarios.  An additional bank of information is available for road and air transport of horses.  Many opportunities exist for conducting practical studies to obtain science-based information regarding best practices for animal transport.   

PowerPoint Presentation

 Peter STINSON

Services Manager, LiveCorp   

Chandler MacLeod House

Suite 202, 32 Walker St

North Sydney NSW 2060

PO Box 1174

North Sydney NSW 2059

Australia

Tel: +61 2 9929 6755

       +61 2 9929 6733

pstinson@livecorp.com.au

 www.livecorp.com.au

Peter is the LiveCorp Services Manager for the Australian Livestock Export Corporation (LiveCorp) Peter has been with LiveCorp since 2000 working in the area of Standards and quality management for the Livestock export industry. During that time Peter has been involved the construction of industry Standards and guidelines and the quality assurance programs needed to deliver the outcomes required by the Standards. He has also been involved with various research programs aimed at improving the export processes especially in areas of regulation and standards. This has involved the development of tools for the exporter to ensure compliance with standards with a minimum of economic impact. Such tools have extended to software programs, risk management programs training programs and other quality assurance programs. 

Peter’s original training was in Microbiology but with a career in the Food industry developed extensive skills in quality management and risk management before moving to the meat industry and then Livestock industry.

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“Belly Hold Ventilation Software and Crate

Design for Aircraft”

Peter STINSON

Services Manager

LiveCorp

The export of livestock from Australia has been predominately by sea with the larger sheep markets in the Middle East as well as good cattle markets in South East Asia demanding high volume exports. However there has always been a small level of airfreight for the higher value breeding stock requiring a greater amount of care and point to point delivery. This level of business has for many years been stable. However of late more opportunities have been developed and with more airlines concentrating on the freight aspects of the process, air freighting of Livestock out of Australia is on the increase.

This has meant an increased level of competition among airlines to carry livestock. Industry realised that outside a small number of specialist exporters, very little was known about the aircraft engineering aspects of airfreight. Low cost airlines coming into the trade combined with this lack of knowledge gave rise to a number of incidents where animals were compromised through inadequate aircraft loading or hold ventilation.

As Australian regulation places the onus for the safe travel of livestock on the exporter, it was realised that the exporter in general did not have the knowledge to control the many factors influencing aspects such as container design and ventilation which were vital to the safe carriage of animals.

The industry invested in Research work to develop software that assessed the compatibility of a livestock consignment to the ventilation requirements of each and every type of aircraft involved in the carriage of livestock out of Australia. The output of this software forms part of the Risk Management analysis mandated for each consignment of livestock.

Likewise the construction of containers and crates for aircraft was not fully understood particularly the cheaper, one use only, wooden crates. This gave rise to a project to develop more definitive standards for construction to give the exporter the ability to specify the construction of crates which will meet the requirements of all aspects airfreight.

This presentation gave an insight into the development and application of these tools.

PowerPoint Presentation

Last Updated: 22-Jul-2009

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