Calf and human perspectives about handling and restraint during western Canadian beef calf processing events
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Beef calf processing involves individually handling and restraining calves for procedures such as castration, branding, and vaccination. It also serves an important sociocultural purpose for those in the ranching community. The method by which people handle and restrain calves during processing differs among operations. In western Canada, the most common methods are roping and wrestling (RW), roping and Nord fork (RNF), and using a tilt table (TT). However, the calf welfare implications of these methods, as well as how these common methods are perceived by participants in western Canadian beef calf processing events, are unknown. The first study (Chapter 2) compared the effects of the three common methods of handling and restraint (i.e., RW, RNF, and TT) used to process calves on behavioural indicators associated with calf welfare. It was found that overall, differences detected in the effect of these methods on various indicators during processing were inconsistent. After processing, RNF calves displayed the highest rates of foot stomping, followed by RW calves, then TT calves. This was the first study to evaluate the effects of common handling and restraint methods used in western Canadian beef calf processing events on behavioural indicators associated with calf welfare, as well as include the roping and Nord fork method. The second study (Chapter 3) described how people who participate in processing events perceive common handling and restraint methods used for pre-weaned beef calves on western Canadian cow-calf operations. In this study, it was revealed that participants in western Canadian beef calf processing events prefer the roping and wrestling method the most and the tilt table the least. However, the underlying values behind participants’ indicated preferences shared much in common. Specifically, the values of calf safety and minimizing calf stress, efficiency, convenience, and human safety and limiting labour intensity were shared by many participants when considering handling and restraint methods for processing, regardless of their noted preferences. This was the first time the current perceptions of participants in western Canadian beef calf processing events regarding the common handling and restraint methods were described.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".