Creating Connections Commences in Australia

By: Dr. Kev Sullivan, Production Animal Consultation

The Creating Connections program, the brain child of Dr. Paulo Loureiro from Merck commenced its rollout in Australia with Austrex, a major cattle live export shipping company, as the first company to embrace and sign up for the program.

Dr. Kev conducted the week long training program which ran from the 26th of October to 30th of October with three key people from Austrex and one key manager from Merck as participants. The program consisted of a half day “classroom” session discussing basic principles of cattle handling and expectations of the participants, followed by one and a half days of on-site cattle handling in the cattle yards. This included one-on-one sessions with Dr. Kev and opportunities for all four participants to practice their skills. Video was made of the participants handling cattle and there was a video review session. This video review session was very valuable and well received by the team.

It was requested that as a prerequisite to the training all of the participants enroll and complete the on-line training modules before the commencement of the week.

After spending two full days in Portland live export facility, Victoria, where the cattle are mostly British and European types, the team moved from the cold weather of the south to tropical Darwin in the Northern Territory where it was hot and the cattle are Bos Indicus, Brahman or Brahman cross cattle. Most of these animals have had little or no human interaction and are often mustered by helicopter and vehicles. This is a completely different production system from the system experienced in Victoria. These cattle are fast and very sensitive.

The team spent two days examining the system and working with these cattle in short lessons. It was amazing how quickly these unhandled very sensitive cattle responded and within a few minutes and a couple of short lessons the team had a herd of 1200 head walking straight in an orderly fashion past the handlers around the paddock, from corner to corner and to feed and water.

This was an exceptionally rewarding experience for the team, myself and most of all the cattle. The expectations of the people and the cattle were met.

Follow up training with the team is essential and this will occur in early 2016. The Creating Connections snowball has starting rolling down the hill and it cannot be stopped.