Estudio de indicadores conductuales para evaluar el descargue de bovinos en plantas de beneficio

Abstract

Abstract

Objective: To assess behavioral indicators and human-animal interactions during the cattle download in a Colombian slaughterhouse. Methods: An index composed by the downloading time and cattle behavior was calculated during this process. Similarly, the human-animal interaction during download was recorded. The association between variables was evaluated by simple linear regression analysis. Results: A total of 180 groups were observed, made up by 1,595 bovines from eight Colombian departments. The mean downloading time was 4.52±0.8 min per group. Here, 76.7% (n = 138) of the evaluated groups presented acceptable scorings. The most common behavioral events were slips (22.8%), jumps (10.7%) and vocalizations (8.7%). The predominant human-animal interactions were whistling (1.64±0.24/animal), hitting (1.39±0.27/animal) and talking (1.19±0.19/animal). The electric prod was not used In this stage. Vocalizations were correlated with the number of hits given by the cattle drivers (p<0.05). Conclusions: The results allow concluding that the Luna Azul ISSN 1909-2474 No. 37, julio - diciembre 2013 
©Universidad de Caldas revista.luna.azúl. 2013; 37: 10-17 download area design and the repulsive handling by the staff were the factors of most considerable influence so that this stage turned into a stressful situation and made cattle handling difficult. 

Keywords:

Índice de descargue

interacción hombre-animal

comportamiento

Download score

human-animal interaction

behavior

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