- So with that, I'd like to introduce Heidi Carroll.
Heidi is a Minnesota native that grew up
on a small family farm.
Heidi gained her love of livestock from her father, Peter,
who is a livestock nutritionist.
He allowed her to tag along on farm calls
and learned through doing,
and by asking a million questions.
As a result, Heidi completed both her bachelors
and her master's degree in Animal Science
from South Dakota State University.
Between her degrees, she spent a year teaching English
at China Agricultural University in Beijing, China,
and a year working as the Assistant Bar Manager
for the SDSU equestrian team in Brookings, South Dakota.
Currently in her role as the SDSU Extension Livestock
Stewardship Associate, she conducts producer certification
trainings for the various livestock
quality assurance programs and presents low-stress
livestock handling methods.
Please welcome, Heidi Carroll.
(applause)
- All right.
Well, thank you for the invitation to be here today.
Thank you also for the opportunity to speak
with your youth, so hopefully you guys
will find some benefit in this challenging topic that
I agreed to speak about.
Animals might be the easy thing,
but when we start talking people,
the livestock crowd sometimes starts to get
a little squirmish.
So bear with me if I hit the uncomfortable button
every now and then.
I'm not sorry.
So I hope that you guys listen with an open mind.
And me following the lunch makes it even more challenging,
so I'm gonna ask how many of you are livestock producers?
Please stand.
Or have your own animals, please stand.
Okay, thank you.
Sit down.
How many of you are working with the university
or in academia of some sort?
Please stand.
All right, so pretty good, pretty balanced.
Sit down please.
How many of you are working in an industry role,
may it be nutrition, consulting?
All right, good, thank you very much.
So the topic of livestock stewardship,
it's kind of a phrase that maybe all of us
are not as familiar with.
So if you see these pictures up here, what comes to mind?
Shout out some answers.
Fair, that was the first answer.
There's youth also, that's good.
Okay, when we start to see these images of
youth projects, we see these images at the fair,
it's a very positive image about livestock production.
If I change the view a little bit,
I know these are sheep,
I didn't have the same pictures for cattle yet
so bear with me.
We do all the same procedures with our cattle.
Now what comes to mind?
Okay, it's not quite as nice
as the other image we see.
This is day-to-day life.
This is what cattlemen, cattlewomen do on a daily basis
with their livestock.
We feed them, we care for then,
we care for the young that they produce.
And at some point, they end up on our plates.
Now just so you know, I work in South Dakota,
and if we would've served chicken or pork
at a beef meeting, we would've got slapped.
Just saying, but that's because beef producers
in South Dakota think they're number one as well.
So if we have to talk about what we do on a daily basis,
we have to also be able to justify what we do.
So now in the cattle, we don't always have it easy.
We can do things a million different ways
to get the same process.
And so here you see a couple examples of caring
for some newborns that have the unfortunate birth date
of finding some winter weather.
It's accomplishing the same thing and preventing frostbite,
but it looks a little different.
It accomplishes the same thing.
Is there a cost difference?
Farmers and ranchers first want to make sure
that they can do things if it affects their pocketbook.
So just bear with me, we'll cost analyze
our two pictures here.
On the left, if we want to create the fuzzy little
ear protectors for our newborn calves that get born in say,
March or February snowstorms,
we're gonna make them out of some fleece material.
So there's the cost of making one if it takes a yard.
Here's what it cost of duct tape.
Every farmer's essentials.
So if we would cost analyze this and talk about
being able to do this,
oh, we're gonna take the reasonable option, right,
to accomplish our task?
But now we have to start thinking about
what does livestock husbandry
or livestock stewardship look like?
We used to talk about livestock husbandry.
Some of our animal science departments actually had
the title of being animal husbandry
instead of animal science departments.
There's still a component of science in that title,
but if we start to talk about what stewardship is,
and you look up the definition of stewardship,
you get a lot of different words.
You've now shifted away from the scientific control
or production of animals,
and we've shifted.
It's not just science.
We're now talking about a responsibility,
but who is that responsibility to?
We have to understand that what we do on a daily basis
now needs to have proper regard
for the rights of others.
Science isn't always pretty,
but it's necessary and if we want to figure out
what our best management practices is.
We have to be able to use science to justify
our management practices.
Are we going to figure out our nutritional standards
for that animal?
You're going to have to go back, do a surgery on that animal
to figure out their nutritional needs,
and that's where we got our research from,
to justify what the nutritional needs are.
We have to understand that our consumer is changing
what they want, but they're not saying that we have
to arrive at a different place.
So how do we shift from the scientific control concept
that was husbandry to more of an individual
responsibility concept of livestock stewardship?
We're all really good about building fences.
After all, we have to keep the animals in
or keep the other animals out.
What producers are not necessarily good at
is building bridges.
We don't always learn how to communicate with somebody
who doesn't understand agriculture.
You've all listened to the social media
in being able to hear about how we can reach out,
how you can share your story,
but you as a producer also have a responsibility
to the other producers you work with.
Those in academia also have to figure out how to train
other youth coming into our industry
to learn how to build these bridges.
But every bridge has a limit,
right?
People have limits.
We're really good at telling people
to stay over there.
Let me do what I'm doing on my property
the way I want to do it.
It doesn't always get that responsibility
with regards to other's rights
if we're telling everybody to stay over there
and stay out of my business.
So there's this fine line that we're learning how to balance
when we're raising our cattle,
but we always have to remember
we're raising cattle for food.
Yes, we eat our own cattle or you eat whatever animal
you might raise and fill your own freezer,
but somebody else that didn't raise that animal
will also eat it.
And so those are those things
that are starting to become hot topics.
Animal well-being, animal care, lameness,
managing the environment that these animals live in
before they end up on our plate.
Then we have to think about who these neighbors are.
It might be other livestock producers,
or its people you've never met,
people that want to choose healthy things
to feed their families.
Maybe it's somebody who doesn't want
to even eat meat anymore.
There's a lot of people who choose to be vegan
or choose to be vegetarian, and that's fine.
Those aren't necessarily people you need to talk with,
but are they?
We talked about engaging people with different viewpoints,
understanding that those that are looking for label claims
to know how that animal was raised is still important.
Some of the information that the surveys
that Slow Food found back in 2013 found out
is these welfare-labeled products that are starting
to make an interest into the supermarkets,
they're considered healthier, higher quality
and more environmentally sustainable.
Okay, those are good things.
As a producer, I think those are good things.
But now we've thrown in these products
are ethically important.
That's not food safety.
I see John had to leave, but-- pfft-- ethics,
that's not food safety.
How do you research your check off dollars
towards ethical decision-making,
which is what I talk to the youth about?
How do we target consumers and help each other
understand what we're doing on a daily basis
if 79% of your consumers
are thinking that our cattle should be raised like our dog
and our cat?
My couch isn't big enough for the herd bull,
and I don't want him there.
How many of you have had newborns
you've had to bring in the house
so they don't get hypothermia?
Okay, when they're babies, it's cute.
You can take really good pictures
and put them on the Internet
about how you care for babies.
When we start caring for those animals
when they get bigger and closer to the end of their life,
it's not as touchy feely.
But we also have to realize that 21% of our consumers
have a low level of agreement
that US meat is derived from humanely treated animals.
Tsk.
Now not such a positive story.
You've got 21% of your consumers that already think
you're doing it wrong, okay?
We need to change that image.
But how are we going to change it?
So the definition of stewardship has that component
of the proper regards for others.
So who are those others?
We've got moms.
I'm a mom, I have a one-year-old as of yesterday.
The food service, they work very closely
with the cattle buyers, they work very closely with packers,
helping us understand what are consumers looking for.
And the consumers themselves, they're telling us
what they want with their purchases, right?
We have to be sensitive to where that's going.
But did you realize that other livestock producers
are included in those others?
How many of you would say you're a traditional cattleman?
Many?
Does anybody follow an actual or an organic program
for their meat?
Sometimes these differing viewpoints
occur with your neighbors, your fellow cattlemen.
So how do we work towards the same goal
of producing a safe, wholesome product
for consumers who want different things?
We have to understand that, that proper regard
for someone else who uses a different management practice
is just as important as it is when our consumer is saying
they want that management practice.
But we also have to then understand how we coexist
in the same industry and not paint this picture
of confusion
about one is better than another.
We have to talk about what the cattle need.
It's kind of the point.
You have to raise the animal first.
So those basic needs of those animals
is what you do on a daily basis.
You determine what they're feeding, what shelter they get,
all in minimizing the stress on that animal.
But your consumer and the public wants you to prove
your practices that you do.
And what that means is just a little more paperwork, right?
That's how we prove what we've done on our farms,
treatment records, making sure that you're following
withdrawal times on products.
We want to make sure that we're justifying
our practices appropriately.
So how do we do that in our industry?
Making sure that we really work on our interactions
that we do on a daily basis, may it be with our animals;
making sure that we're caring for them appropriately,
but then also not forgetting about our neighbors.
How are we engaging them on a daily conversational level?
Making sure that we are staying up-to-date
on what some of those best management practices are.
Are they changing?
The dairymen,
the farm program said tail docking is going to be a no-no.
That changes your management practices.
How are you gonna adjust?
There's a lot of discussions, there's a lot of,
sometimes, frustration, when we start talking about
people telling us how to do things.
We hate that.
But we need that to strive towards continuous improvement.
We also have to think about those industry
training programs that help there.
Your check-off dollars go right back to work for you
in participating in the beef quality assurance trainings,
participating in the truck or transport quality
assurance trainings.
If you choose not to participate, that's your choice.
But does it send a message to your consumer
who wants their meat to know how it was raised?
The answer is yes.
So making sure that you're understanding these things
might be voluntary still.
Are you willing to see the value in those things
and saying, "You know, it's still voluntary,
"I maybe don't get a premium yet."
But to keep my consumer buying my product,
I'm gonna be progressively thinking.
I'm gonna get on board, I'm gonna get my certification
and maintain my certification.
Gotta think about the youth.
What are we teaching them?
And as adults, we need to make sure we stay
forever learners.
So if we understand that people are more of a puzzle
than our animals, and cause more problems than our animals
like we do, what do we impact?
We make the choices of what animal we breed.
What genetics they're going to have,
what's our breeding goals.
We have the choice to impact that.
We choose what feed we give our livestock,
how much water they get, the quality of that.
All of that depends on the product
that we're trying to produce.
We directly choose what shelter or protection
they might get in the environments that they live in.
How much space each animal gets.
We determine the level of hygiene that animal maintains,
and the health, the preventative care that animal gets.
Is it gonna have a vaccination program,
or are we gonna wait till something breaks out
and then we just use antibiotics as a treatment?
Okay, we make those decisions.
It impacts the well-being of that animal.
We determine how far that animal is gonna travel.
How many of you show?
Anybody show your livestock?
Come on, the youth said they did.
You determine the amount of travel you do.
Does traveling impact the well-being of that animal?
Yes.
Stress, right?
You directly impact the behavior of your cattle
by the environment you keep them in.
You can train your animal to do things
by keeping a routine.
The animals you show, well, you gotta change their behavior.
You gotta teach them to halter a lead.
That's a direct change of behavior.
They're not born that way.
They're a little headstrong.
We ultimately determine what body parts
our animals keep, right?
That's a sensitive topic.
Now if we started to determine what body parts people keep,
well, it gets a lot more personal, okay?
Some people are making those same connections
with how their food is raised.
They want to make sure that, that animal
has a natural life.
But where's that focus?
It's on the people.
Okay, if people are making all these decisions,
that's pretty powerful.
Cattle aren't making those decisions,
but what we choose is determine the amount of stress
that animal was under throughout its life.
And ultimately, the level of welfare that that animal
experiences throughout its life.
Now that becomes very important to your consumer.
Who thinks people are easy?
(chuckles)
Didn't think I'd get any hands.
We're all in the livestock business,
the farming, hobby farming, show farming,
whatever it is, because we enjoy the livestock.
Does anybody have a background
in psychology, sociology?
Okay, people are not easy to understand.
If I understood myself,
some days I wish I had my own owner's manual
because then I would understand myself
and my husband will agree with you.
He wishes I had a handbook some days.
But animals are the easy part.
But it's the people who are ultimately determining
the level of well-being that your cattle,
that my steak experiences when it's alive.
So we have to figure out this balance
of livestock stewardship of an animal
and remember that a consumer who never sees
that animal alive thinks about these things
when they're purchasing the product
and when they're eating that product.
So I'm gonna shift gears a little bit.
So my masters research was actually trying to figure out
this cattle-human interaction a little bit more.
The effect of handler personality type
on feedlot cattle behavioral responses
was the goal.
We all have seen cattle respond differently
for somebody else than they do for you.
People can do really good with cattle,
and then there's people who drive the feed truck, okay?
You want to figure out how somebody responds
to the cattle, or how those cattle respond to the people
because that actually impacts how the animals
experience stress.
So why do we get this topic?
So the handler impacts a few main areas
that is very economically important to us as farmers
and ranchers, but also to consumers.
If you have poor handling,
you're going to have higher treatment costs.
That definitely is going to impact your bottom line
and your break even points when you're trying to do
your balance sheets.
If you can minimize treatment costs and the product
that you have to use, the vet calls that you have to call
just by the way you handle your animals,
that sounds pretty valuable to me.
Poor handling has a very negative impact
on the growth performance of the animals.
Animals that are handled rough,
they go off feed.
They increase their cortisol responses
and their immune system is compromised until they recover.
So when you get highly excitable cattle
and you work them and they stay worked up,
and then they hit the feedlot after they get off
that trailer, you're gonna have increased treatment costs,
and it's going to be harder to get those animals
back on feed.
So even thinking about giving them their shots
and their vaccinations upon arrival is pointless.
Their immune system is simply trying to recover
from the handling they experience.
Poor handling also increases the amount of lameness
our animals experience.
Lameness has been in the news the last couple of years,
may it be for poor handling or may it be for the products
that we use in terms of bad agonist potentially having
a negative impact on lameness.
So we have to understand that
how are people,
may it be you as an owner/manager
or the employees you hire, has all these impacts
on our cattle?
And are consumers concerned?
So if our consumer is concerned and they buy our product,
we also had better take an interest in what they're saying.
There's definite research to back up
that poor handling has a negative impact
on the quality of the meat that comes off that animal.
You have an increased chance of dark cutting beef.
It has a negative impact on the quality,
decreased shelf life.
In addition to that, just the amount of bruising
that an animal has on its carcass from poor handling
has to get cut off at the packing plant.
You've now lost potential food that could be fed
to an increasing global population.
Well, if we need to raise more food for the world
and we're throwing it away by bruising,
by animals that are getting condemned
because they're too lame,
we could solve some issues there, right?
Pretty easily.
We also have to be concerned about our human capital.
Do you consider yourself as an owner or an employee
human capital, a human asset?
You are if you talk business terms.
People who work with cattle have a very high
incident rate of injuries.
How many of you have been in this picture before?
It's kind of an entertaining picture, right?
Very realistic, isn't it?
Hits close to home.
Okay?
The goal is to not get injured,
you don't have to prove you're fearless,
you don't have to prove your manhood, guys.
The same research also found that guys
have higher incidence rates than females too.
I'll leave it at that.
But the research also found that human error
still is the number one reason
that these accidents are happening.
Well, that seems controllable, right?
If it's the humans that are the ones that
potentially are making the choices and interacting
with those animals, we can change our behavior.
It's not easy, but we can do it.
You also have to consider about stockman expertise.
We have a pretty good age range of people
still in the crowd, and the youth are obviously
at another location.
All of us have had different backgrounds growing up,
may it be raising cattle from the day you were born
to those of us that either join the industry
because we love animals and wanted to be a vet
and now have to learn how to react with those animals
to somebody who may be married into a family,
never knowing what the farm life was like.
There's very different degrees of people
that are coming into our livestock industries
that need training,
that don't have those backgrounds.
So how do we go about making sure that they stay safe
when they work with our animals?
The expertise is kind of a balance.
People are born with natural abilities or skills,
but you also have to learn through your experiences.
And so as the generations have removed themselves
from the farm, you've lost some of that.
And so you lose some of that first-hand knowledge
or that common sense that we call it
about how an animal behaves and how you react
in those situations.
So that's kind of the logic to the project.
But then why did I choose personality type?
The main reason why we pursued personality type
was it's the thing that kinda
remains consistent over time.
We have a lot of experiences that shape us,
but your personality type impacts your behavior,
your decision-making, and it actually stays consistent
quite well over culture.
The other thing we think about is personality type
impacts the jobs that we like,
the jobs you might go pursue.
And there's been some research to show
that different personality types
sometimes get hurt more than others.
So some people are bold and courageous
and get themselves in that situation
where they're not gonna back down from that cow
no matter what.
I'm gonna get the job done, okay?
It has its place.
Also, personality type, you can assess it.
And sometimes, it's a way of evaluating performance.
So it was a very useful way to approach the people side,
which is our hard side to evaluate.
Other things that we have to think about with the project
was how are we gonna measure the cattle reactions?
How do you go about measuring well-being?
There's some research out there that talks about
vocalization, making sure that if you're being attuned
to your animals, are they vocalizing, are they in pain,
are they in stress?
Other measurements include slipping and falling
during handling, the amount of chaos that's going on,
this pace that those animals are responding.
The other important thing that we had to remember
was if this is going to be kind of a tool to use
and evaluate the cattle responses,
you gotta get some consistency.
Just like auditors have to figure out
how to use a tool, an auditing tool,
we had to figure out how to get the minimal amount
of review or variation in assessing this.
So we use some of the tools that already exist,
using some of the feedlot tools that Dr. Granton
has put together, some of the transportation,
using some of that to kind of shape how we approach this.
So the real objectives to the project,
one was to get that scoring method of the cattle reactions,
and the other one was then to actually figure out
and evaluate was there an effective
handler personality type?
So the personality type assessments that we use,
we use the Myers-Briggs personality type.
And so we had a very small sample of students,
as well as our feedlot workers that participated.
There's really no other research to compare this to,
so it's preliminary data trying to feel out the waters,
to find if there was something to pursue.
Those of you that might be familiar
with the Myers-Briggs assessment,
you have two different dichotomies.
There's four of them.
And so they use those,
and you go through a questionnaire and it places you
into a personality type.
So our group of 12,
we found that it was challenging in some respects
to figure out and try to balance
the level of experience of people.
So our goal in approaching that was
at least finding those individuals in our department
that had cattle background or are working
towards cattle work.
So our large animal graduate students,
our feedlot workers who've already had that experience
were part of it.
The other assessment we used was
what was called a character strength assessment.
Now this one was a different approach and again,
we're probably all animal people, not necessarily
human scientists.
So this one had a different approach.
You still fill out a questionnaire, but it places you
in terms of your character strengths.
So some of those you would see prudence or honesty,
judgment, your zest, your teamwork.
They all had definitions that go with them,
but I'm not gonna spend a lot of time explaining that.
And so for my placement or categorizing of the people,
I use that and I place them based off of
their top three strengths.
And so if they got these three circled strengths here,
the assessment would also categorize them
where they're more heart thinking or they're more mindful
in their thought process, or do they think about others
versus themselves more?
So that's why you see the mind, the heart
and others in the cells.
So it kind of categorized those character strengths
based on a larger category.
So this individual would've then be placed
as heart, because two out of the three
were closer to the heart.
And also then more as an others.
So that placement was how that individual will be placed
based off their top three strengths.
So the actual cattle side of things,
we had to figure out what the people were gonna do
with the cattle.
How are we gonna look at this?
So we thought about typical cattle interactions
and came up with three specific exercises.
The first one was pretty basic.
We wanted them to just approach a pressure zone
but not really interact.
So the task that the people were given
was simply, they had three tag numbers of animals
that they had to write down based off of the paint brands
they had on their head.
So they had to walk into a penned cattle.
You see the dirt lot picture,
those were the pens our cattle were kept in.
They had to walk in, find the right paint brand and number
and get close enough to read the tag.
We do that on a daily basis.
You go out, do health checks,
you got to figure out which animal is sick.
You don't necessarily have to go interact with that animal
to get a tag number.
The second exercise, we wanted to actually have them
interact with the cattle at a certain extent.
So what they had to do, they had to go into the pen
of 14 steers, and all they had to do
was put them into two equal groups in the opposite ends
of the pen and hold them apart for 10 seconds.
That was it, nothing hard there, right?
We split groups of animals all the time.
So a little bit closer interaction
than just having to go in and read your tags.
Our third interaction was specifically trying to get
at close interactions.
So they took from their home pens,
those dirt lots you saw on the picture,
took 'em down the alley down to our sorting alley,
which is in the dotted spot there.
And then they had to just sort each animal back one by one.
So now they've got into a sorting alley,
which is close quarters.
You're gonna get a little bit more reaction
out of the animals, and so those people have to
pay attention a little bit more.
So our 12 handlers that we selected, they went through,
they did their personality type assessments.
We then randomly assigned them to two
of three pens of cattle.
It didn't matter what their personality type was.
We didn't know, we just assigned them randomly
to those groups.
Each pen of cattle was handled a total of eight times,
but within each day that we had people come out,
we wanted to make sure that each pen was not handled
more than two times.
So I rearranged schedules just to make sure
that those that were assigned to pens,
we could balance out each pen for each day.
This way, we all know that cattle kind of figured out
what we want them to do,
so we want to limit the conditioning of those animals
to the task we were asking them.
And then we videotaped all of this
and I then, myself and three other reviewers,
critiqued the videos and then used our scoring system,
which we developed.
So our scoring system was based on these nine
behavior responses that we identified
as kind of important ones.
Where the animal's attention was.
So we had a desirable score, which was a +1, +2, +3 scale,
or there was an undesirable score or a -1, -2, -3,
so we have a total of a six-point scale.
The attention of the animals is important.
We wanted to make sure we could evaluate
if they were having problems in the cattle getting excited,
so we talked about fence contact.
We also tried to figure out some other ones,
the curiosity of animals.
Why would we choose that?
Some people think that the amount of fear an animal has
is a sign of its well-being.
So we were trying to figure out some of those other things
that potentially could be important
in terms of behavior responses.
We also, excitability, that's pretty easy to see.
The flight zone, we wanted to kind of just gauge.
Is it a long distance, was it a short distance?
How the animals moved.
Was their footing okay?
Did they stay in a group or did they just all scatter
for gregarious?
The movement of those animals.
Did they kind of maintain a fluid motion
depending on the task that they were asked?
And then obviously, the pace.
So those undesirable things for each of those
nine items,
we wanted to make sure that we figured out
what might be good for all three of those exercises,
and that was probably the hardest part to this project,
was what's good, what's a bad response?
You know it when you see it,
but when you have to put words to it,
there's a whole new way of trying to think about
evaluating cattle behavior.
So that was the nine points to our score.
We then summed the nine responses
to get our total cattle score.
So how we went about actually analyzing the score?
We used a completely random design
for our experimental design.
Our personality type in the cattle exercise
remained as our fixed variables,
and our random variables remain to be our reviewer,
because we had four of them,
our pen and all other interactions.
So what we also wanted to do,
we get to evaluate that scoring system.
So we looked for correlations between our score variables.
So those nine items, we tried to figure out what,
were they related?
Were they kind of measuring the same thing?
And what we found was that excitability and movement
we're actually correlated with the same three variables.
So what we did next was
we took out those three variables that they were
correlated to, to simplify our score.
So we left excitability in and movement in,
because they were simply evaluating
some of the same things.
So if we looked at the score,
and we used our scores of our handlers,
and this example here is just the introverted,
extroverted of the Myers-Briggs assessment,
and what I have there and read,
what we found is that our cattle score
actually was a pretty good model.
That R squared kind of means did it explain
the differences we saw between our handlers
and the way the cattle reacted?
We wanted to also then figure out,
well, was there a difference?
And we thought we wanted to make sure,
did our reviewers do a good job?
There was not a reviewer by personality type interactions,
which means our reviewers didn't play favorites
on the personality type of the individual
that was handling in the videos.
Now there was almost a .06 there
for our personality type,
or excuse me, on the personality type,
you'll see a less than .01.
There was just a personality type interaction,
and there was just a reviewer interaction.
So even though there was not favorites
to the personality types by the reviewer,
there was still a significant reviewer interaction,
so maybe we shouldn't have necessarily
taken it out of our model as we went on.
But since we did not see the personality type
by reviewer interaction, we decided to then combine
our reviewer scores when we went on for our last analysis.
So I had the three different exercises.
So we also wanted to figure out
where they good?
Did they do what we thought they were going to do?
And so all the exercises showed
that there was a significant way
to identify a difference between handler personality types,
and that's what this is showing here.
The .49, that R squared is saying that it's explaining
49% of the variation that you see
between your two personality-type categories.
And so that was good for us to see.
It's kind of gauging about half of the variability,
and it's proving to be significant.
So if we broke down the exercises on their own,
exercise one, where they just had to go read the ear tags
really wasn't explaining the differences we were seeing.
That's fine, all the cattle were pretty calm
when the person walked into the pen.
You had to get just close enough.
If you're nearsighted like me, you got to get
a little bit closer.
But you didn't get a lot of reactions
so the scores were pretty good.
Positive scores, the cattle behaved appropriately.
So then you see exercise two by itself,
and you see that it became significant
and was able to tell some differences
in our handler personality types.
So that was nice to see.
And then also, exercise three,
that one also was significant and able to explain
some of that variation.
So those two exercises together, we kind of kept in
and we combine them to kind of see if they explained
anymore of the variation.
And they also remain significant to be able to help us
understand differences in personality type.
So that was the first objective of the project,
was get a scoring system.
So then we shifted for that to actually then
using that scoring system to determine
how those animals actually reacted.
So we changed our analytical model and so
what we did, we used then our adjusted cattle score,
and we set up our total adjusted cattle score
using both exercise two and exercise one,
since they were both useful.
What was interesting is I'm only showing you information
about the Myers-Briggs.
And the reason why is that was the only assessment
that actually proved to help us show differences.
The way that the character strength assessment was set up,
it was very good and helped explain
and have a person understand themselves,
but it really doesn't work in science and research
in terms of, you need a really big population of people
to find differences using that tool.
So on our small one, we didn't see
any statistical differences in our handlers
based on just that character strength.
However, when we look at our introverted
and extroverted dichotomy, we were able to see
that there was still a large amount
of variability explained, that .47 is our explanation
of that variability, but it was only a trend.
The P value is just a 0.1.
And so this being preliminary data,
it's kind of interesting to see that there still might be
something there.
People are still the important part
about having an impact and how our cattle are behaving,
which has that direct impact on our pocketbook
and the quality of the meat that your consumer is getting.
So kind of wrapping up on that,
we were able to observe those human-cattle interactions
using our three different exercises and figured out
that actually getting the person to interact
with those animals and not just walk into a pen
was much more valuable to see those interactions.
Our scoring system, we were able to evaluate it
and find some of those key observations
that people need to look at when we talk about
cattle reactions, and is it positive or is it negative?
And then finding that those exercises were useful.
Now when we talk about the human side,
just due to the way that these
personality type assessments were set up,
the Myers-Briggs, that introverted
and extroverted dichotomy really was the one
that stood out to us.
All the other ones were not significant
and not even close to having any trends
for being able to identify differences in our handlers.
So there seems to be something to this concept
of personality type and understanding
what makes a person do what they do.
Now what does that mean?
Why am I talking about personality type and cattle behavior?
Well, being able to identify these simple interactions
can maybe help you figure out who's good at their job
or how, who needs a little bit more training and guidance
on how to handle cattle in a low-stress manner?
Also, using the scoring system,
it was repeatable across the reviewers;
but also, we had reviewers that were knowledgeable
in cattle handling.
What would've happened if we had somebody
from the general public be a reviewer?
Would we see the same scores?
Sometimes we have to also think about
who our reviewers are.
And for us as cattle producers,
farmers, ranchers, hobby farmers, show farmers,
whatever it is, we have to figure out
who's our reviewers, who's our critics?
Are they using the same scoring system
that we would use to say, "We're doing a good job."?
And I think some of our industry members
are trying to get to that point.
We're trying to evaluate, "Are we doing a good job?"
Are we being sustainable?
Are we doing good on our welfare of our animals?
So there's something to personality type
and understanding who you are.
But we also have to keep in mind that
our cattle speak their own language, right?
We speak our own language.
Raise your hand, how many of you are the only owner
for your cattle?
Okay.
How many of you have employees that work for you?
Okay.
How many of you have random hired neighbor help?
Okay, not too many.
We have to also then think about the language
of other people that work with us.
There's a lot of people in livestock industries
that are more of an introverted person,
and we saw higher cattle behavior scores
for those that were introverted versus extroverted.
We have to understand that I don't have
the same personality type, I don't make decisions
the same way you do.
We have to think the generational differences.
What experience is shaped,
who you are and how you do your business each day
versus your next-generation coming in to either help you,
or the next generation coming in to take over for you?
Because we have direct communication
with our animals every day.
We also have direct communication with those
who work with us, or hired under us everyday.
But we also have to now understand
that not just to you as an owner have a direct impact
on your animal's welfare.
Your ability to communicate effectively to everybody
who interacts with your animals
will determine that level of welfare
that animal experiences.
You can have the best SOP, standard operating procedures
you want in writing.
But unless you communicate your expectations
to every person who does a part of that,
you're gonna get differing levels of outcomes.
And the real big challenge is if we don't know
how to communicate simply about these topics
and our expectations, well, do we really understand it?
After doing my masters project,
I don't understand people any better.
But I'm getting real good at watching cattle
tell me what they want and what they need.
Learning to be observant
of what is an indicator of stress
or positive well-being is very important.
So what's your role?
And I'll try to wrap up here with a few things
and kind of some challenges for you.
If you are an owner or a manager and you have influence
with other people, you need to learn
how to be a leader first.
Figure out and ask yourself,
what are my expectations for the level of care
I want my animal to experience on a daily basis?
Set them in writing.
If you're trying to figure out who's gonna take over
ownership someday especially,
that's important to have things in writing.
Get those expectations communicated.
If I got a dollar for every time somebody said,
"Well, this is how we've always done it,"
I could retire probably already.
(chuckles)
If we want to keep the mentality that we're already
doing it as good as we can, you're missing the boat.
Just as Ronda said, they've changed how they care
for their animals on their farm in the last five years,
10 years, 20 years,
and there's probably going to keep being changes
in how we care for animals, so don't settle for,
"Well, it worked yesterday,"
because your consumer is a moving target.
They have different experiences than you,
and they're going to change their expectations like this,
just by reading an incorrect blog post, right?
We have to understand that you can't settle
for what worked in the past.
And what's really important is understanding
that each one of us is a teacher.
We're a teacher to those who are working with us,
we're a teacher to those who maybe have never
experienced cattle, so we have to understand
how to communicate effectively in that respect.
And we have to understand that we communicate,
but we have to do it well.
And as much as we want to focus on the cattle,
because they're what gives us a paycheck
at the end of the day instead of writing a paycheck
for somebody else who helps us, we have to understand
that if you don't focus on the people,
you maybe will never hit your expectations
of the level of care that you want for your animals.
You maybe won't hit those performance goals
you're trying to hit, just because somebody's
not mixing the ration right.
Maybe they're just pushing those animals too hard
to get them on a truck.
So we have to learn how to talk to people.
And what's in the value of hiring that right person?
Or, if you're looking for a job,
how did you become that right person?
We have to remember that those personal experiences
that shape us, they're good.
You can look at the background and what's kind of
shaped the person, but that's gonna be wide and varied.
And especially the new workforce coming in,
those graduating college and entering the cattle industry,
you have to understand the difference in mentality,
the differences in how those experiences they've had
have shaped their work ethic,
shaped their common sense.
Common sense has taken a new definition
when we start talking farm talk.
So we have to understand book knowledge
and translating that to the first-hand experience.
When we talk about personality type,
looking at the person you're trying to hire
and making sure that they have a good character
so they can make decisions when that time comes.
Making sure that you figure out who fits on your farm,
on your ranch, whatever it is,
making sure that they fit with your production goals
and that you can actually work together in a good manner.
And if you're having employees with you,
you have to understand that there's still training.
It doesn't have to be this huge owner's manual
training handbook, but you have to understand
that those people coming into the workforce
need guidance, mentoring.
Training is a word that's starting to have
a negative connotation, in my opinion.
In our department, we talk about mentors.
We talk about our graduate and our undergrad students
having faculty mentors,
or even our newer faculty having
older faculty mentors.
The value of that applies on your farming operation
to make sure that you're getting the expectations
carried out for how you care for your animals.
And again, they need to know your expectations.
Communicate in writing, communicate in some way,
making sure it's effective.
And we can't go anywhere without talking about technology
and how that has impacted how we care for our animals.
We have video cameras, may it be just to help
with calving season, may it be for security purposes,
how are we using those?
We have rumination trackers to know,
are our animals healthy?
Barn designs, making sure we've got proper ventilation.
We talk about all these different things shaping
what livestock well-being looks like.
They can be good, used improperly, they can be negative.
However we decide to implement them on their farm,
we need to realize that we have to train people
with how to use them.
So I kind of want to close.
How many of you heard your cattle say,
"Well, it's his fault.
"That was the one over there that ran away.
"Don't punish all of us and keep us in the corral."
No, cattle don't play the blaming game.
They follow suit because they want to survive.
People have a choice.
So once we get past the concept of his fault,
her fault, their fault, not me,
we have to understand that us,
as the person who's interacting with those animals,
is what is determining the welfare they experience.
So we have to figure out how we can be objective
about looking at ourselves, learn a little bit
about yourself, take a personality assessment
because you're the people that are going to go out,
interact with your animals and make those choices
for those animals.
So making sure that we can improve animal well-being
by being teachable,
by being forward-thinking
and staying on top of whatever consumers and the public
is finding acceptable,
and making sure that we get those facts,
making sure we stay on top of the science to support
our choices on our farm.
So with that, I guess I will take
a couple of questions if we have time.
(applause)