Fall processing is when people get hurt. The facility and the habits that prevent it.

Livestock handling is the leading cause of injury on beef operations, and the injuries are not random. They happen in the alley and at the chute, they happen in the fall, and they happen to people who have done it a thousand times. National Farm Safety and Health Week was this week; this is the livestock half of it.

Design fixes that pay for themselves

Solid sides in the alley and tub. Cattle move toward what they can see and balk at what moves in their peripheral vision. Sheeted sides on the crowding tub and the alley keep them moving forward and keep the person working the tub out of view. Open-sided alleys are where cattle stop, turn, and go over the top.

The tub should not be more than half full. Eight to ten head in a 12-foot tub is plenty. A packed tub means cattle cannot turn to face the alley, and one that panics has nowhere to go but up.

Alley width. 28 to 30 inches for mature cows; adjustable if you run calves through the same system. A cow that can turn around in the alley will.

No place to get pinned. Every gate in the system should swing away from where a person stands. Man-passes, 14 to 16 inches wide, at the tub and along the alley, so nobody has to climb out.

The headgate. Self-catch gates need to be adjusted for the size of cattle going through; an adjustment set for 500-pound calves will choke a cow or let her through. Test it on the first head, not the fortieth.

Footing. Grooved concrete or a dry gravel base in the work area. Mud at the chute is a broken leg for a cow and a broken wrist for a person.

The habits

1. One person gives the signals. The person at the headgate calls when the next animal comes. Nobody pushes cattle up the alley until they hear it.
2. Never reach through the chute. Hands and arms go through the access panels, not between the bars. An animal that lunges takes the arm with it.
3. Work from the side, behind the shoulder, outside the flight zone. Bud Williams and Temple Grandin have taught this for forty years and it still works better than a hotshot. If cattle are not moving, the answer is almost never more pressure.
4. The hotshot stays on the hook. For the one animal in a hundred that will not move, not for every one.
5. Do not work cattle alone, and do not work them tired. The 300th head at 6 p.m. is the one that hurts you.
6. Kids and visitors stay outside the fence. They are the ones who get hit by the gate.
7. Quiet. Yelling, slapping, and whistling raise the stress level for cattle and for the crew. Quiet cattle move better and hit you less.

Before the first pen comes in

Walk the system empty. Swing every gate. Check every latch and every pin. Tighten the bolts on the chute; they loosen every year. Grease the headgate. Replace the bent panel you meant to replace in April. Then run five head through slowly and watch where they balk, because that is where the crew is going to get hurt when there are fifty behind them.

If someone does get hurt

Kicks and crushes to the chest and abdomen can look minor and be serious. Anyone who gets pinned or takes a kick to the torso and feels short of breath or has pain that does not fade in a few minutes goes to the ER. Not tomorrow, not after the pen is done.