Stockyards are crucial for handling livestock, but poor design or maintenance can lead to injuries for both handlers and animals. Effective stockyard design and upkeep are essential for minimizing risks and improving safety and productivity.
What is Stockyard Design?
Stockyards are large pens where livestock are received, kept temporarily, and sorted. Activities in stockyards include weighing, drenching, vaccination, ear tagging, pregnancy testing, and loading/unloading. Good stockyard design helps make animal handling safer and more humane, and it enhances worker safety.
Key Features of Good Stockyard Design
- Utilize livestock’s natural circling and milling behavior.
- Allow livestock to feel they are escaping.
- Avoid making livestock run towards threatening objects.
- Eliminate sharp corners and dead ends.
- Incorporate new technologies like RFID scanning, automated drafting, and weighing.
Risks of Poor Stockyard Design
Investing in well-designed stockyards is crucial as poor design can lead to:
- Increased worker injuries (fractures, contusions, abrasions, crush injuries).
- Higher risk of worker fatalities.
- Reduced efficiency in livestock handling, requiring more workers.
- Increased stress, bruising, and injuries to livestock.
- Delays and restrictions in animal husbandry.
- Lower overall animal welfare.
Making thoughtful decisions about the site, design, and materials from the start can greatly enhance the safety and efficiency of stockyard operations.
For workers
- take care of your own health and safety as well as the health and safety of others
- cooperate with management to meet health and safety requirements and reduce risks.
For businesses
As an employer or business owner, you have legal responsibilities as outlined in the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 for the health and safety of every worker and visitor.
The four-step risk management process below will help businesses to meet their responsibilities under work health and safety (WHS) laws.
You can also use the practical advice in the How to manage work health and safety risks code of practice 2021 (PDF, 0.65 MB).
Standards and compliance
Codes of practice
Related links
- Safe stockyard design (video)
- Cook family talk about managing livestock
- Serious about farm safety
- Safety of older farmers
- Safely handling cattle in the agriculture industry: Shane Webcke talks to Ross Stricklin
- Using drones to improve safety and efficiency in cattle yards
- Serious about grazier safety webinar series
- Safe loading and unloading of cattle
- Safety in animal handling (video)