Alternative Livestock Equipment

Farming techniques are constantly changing and improving. The result is often less work for the farmer and increased cost efficiency for the farm. Livestock benefit as well, experiencing less stressful, more natural and comfortable environments. Some of the more recent improvements in livestock equipment include alternative watering and handling systems, new lighting and confinement alternatives.

  1. Alternative Watering Systems

    • The two main types of alternative watering systems are pumps and gravity systems. Animals push down on nose pumps to produce flowing water. With sling pumps, propellers rotate the entire pump within a stream to push water through a hose into a tank. Windmill technology facilitates three ways to pump water -- mechanical, air and electric. Solar panel-powered pumps convert the sun's energy to DC current to charge pump batteries or directly power the pumps. Gravity systems move water from higher to lower elevations and are simple and inexpensive to install.

    Curved Livestock Handling Systems

    • Curved livestock chutes are more effective for handling livestock because they take advantage of natural livestock behavior. Livestock have a natural tendency to go back where they came from, and the animals think this is what they're doing. They can't see people or moving objects at the end of the chute so they're less likely to spook and try to double back, trample or crush one another. Cattle and sheep in particular possess natural circling behavior.

    Alternative Lighting for Poultry

    • Energy-efficient supplemental lighting reduces electricity costs and improves animal safety and productivity. Poultry are sensitive to three aspects of light: intensity, wavelength (measured in color temperature) and day length. Research has shown that blue light wavelengths help calm birds, red wavelengths reduce feather plucking, blue-green wavelengths help maintain growth and orange-red wavelengths help maintain reproduction.

    Electric Fences for Free-Range Poultry

    • The environmental focus on farming encourages free-range (not caged) chickens' access to fresh air and the outdoors. Fencing is mainly to keep predators out and only partly to keep the chickens in. Although chickens aren't easily zapped by electric fences (their feathers are good insulators), they don't like getting zapped and do avoid them. Of the two types of electric fences for chickens, one is a simple one- or two-wire fence, and the other is electronetting, a net made of polywire. It is a better barrier against predators.