Handling cattle can be stressful on the cattle and operators. Traditional methods of funneling and pushing add more stress. Whit Hibbard And Dawn Hnatow explain the differences between three crowd pen systems:
- wedges narrow options to one and rely on force
- tubs favor a mechanical over behavioral approach
- BudBoxes use a behavioral approach by obeying certain principles.
Source: Drover’s, May 5, 2020. Link. The BudBox is simple in design, easy and cost-effective to build, simple to operate, and is extremely effective in loading squeeze chutes, trucks, trailers and scales.
The BudBox design principle makes our idea become the animals’ idea so they are willing do what we want whether going up the chute to the squeeze, up the loading dock into the truck, through the trailer load out into the trailer, or onto the scale.
INSIGHTS: Discuss the BudBox idea with producers ahead of processing days. This method requires very little reconfiguration of handling enclosures and becomes a win, win, win for producers, processing crews and the cattle.