Animal Health & Welfare

Sheep have evolved from predated animals, thus they have developed a strong escape response. Although we make use of this propensity of sheep to run or move away from potential predators (ourselves or dogs) when gathering or moving them, this does also cause a stress reaction in the animal.

Highly stressed sheep are more likely to panic, which makes them harder to handle, and they are more likely to fall or injure themselves.

Understanding the behaviour of the animal makes them easier and quicker to handle so bringing benefits to the stockperson as well as improved animal welfare. In addition, rough handling (wool pulls, driving sheep forcefully so that they are crushed together or ride on each other) can lead to carcass bruising and downgrading at slaughter.

Sheep have a good ability to learn to associate a particular place with an unpleasant experience. As the animals are moved towards an aversive place their resistance to approaching the place increases, making them harder to move, so more pressure needs to be applied to keep them moving. This can be self-defeating as the sheep try to find escape routes and show increasingly erratic behaviour (freezing, fleeing, baulking, sitting, turning, reversing and jumping or attempting to escape).

The development of place aversion can be avoided by bringing animals through the same handling system several times first where potentially neutral events occur (e.g. going through a weigh crate or foot bath) before very unpleasant management actions are carried out.

The tabs below give further information on what aspects of handling sheep find aversive and provide tips on how to reduce fear when handling.

Some of the principles on handling discussed under the beef cattle health and welfare section on this site and under a specific KT initiative on the design of beef cattle handling facilities are also relevant for sheep.  The links to the right will take you to the relevant pages.