Today our team was hired to give a training course on animal-welfare during transport to the truck drivers from one of Europe’s largest livestock transport and trade companies- Hunland. Eyes on Animals covered best practices, illustrated where improvements can be made from problems seen in the past, and how to take action in difficult circumstances like hot and cold weather. The drivers were motivated and listened attentively. There was a lively discussion and many questions and answers given.
A journalist from De Boerderij, the well-read Dutch agricultural magazine, filmed the Eyes on Animals training course of the Hungarian livestock drivers. A short video of the training session will be available on their online-news site in the near future.
After a morning of theory, we then headed outside for the practical part of the training course. Here we checked on a livestock vehicle to make sure it was in good shape, prepared it for loading and then loaded cattle onto it.
First take a look at the the uneven floor of the cattle-cruiser and height of the ceiling- will all the cattle that you are about to load on the bottom floor have adequate headspace? Should you load the smaller cattle in this section? Things to check before the journey to help avoid suffering and stress.
Herman, the Dutch truck drivers who assists Eyes on Animals with these training courses, watched the drivers load the cattle in a calm manner and then explained the importance of checking that each animal has enough headspace to stand up comfortably inside.
Making sure there is enough bedding on the truck for the number of animals and length of the journey.
We would like to thank Hunland Trans company for taking animal-welfare seriously and investing in extra training opportunities for their employees to learn from and be as competent as possible. We would also like to thank Herman, Tamara, Tea and Levente for helping on this day.