'If you handle animals every day, they get real tame'

By STEVE BROWN
Capital Press

SEATTLE -- Temple Grandin discussed cattle handling and autism at a June 18 special event sponsored by the Food Alliance. Before her presentation and an HBO movie about her life, she sat down for a visit with the Capital Press.

Q: What specific aspects of animal handling are you addressing this evening?

A: Tonight I'm going to talk about how do you set up auditing systems to make sure that, if you're doing a special program like Country Natural Beef, that you are actually doing your program. ... The big mistake a lot of people make on designing a standard, like if there's a hundred things on a questionnaire, they're all weighted equally. ...

I tend to put the emphasis on things I can directly observe. We were just discussing ... about what's pasture, or how long the cattle should be out on pasture. Organic standards specify from the last killing frost to the first killing frost. Then some joker takes them up where there's rocks -- that's not a pasture at all. Any reasonable place you can pasture cattle, that standard's gonna work pretty well, because it's pretty objective. But no one wants a bunch of skinny, half-dead cows on the hoof. You think you can pass an audit because you've had all these other things on the checklist. You should fail, period. That's just atrocious!

Q: Do you see any difference between handling dairy cattle and beef cattle?

A: Dairy cattle are more intensely handled. Dairy cattle walk into the milking parlor voluntarily. ... You can work on taming beef cattle down. You can go to France and watch a beef cow being milked. You don't try that on beef cattle here. If you handle animals every day, they get real tame. You got cattle out on very extensive ranches that hardly see people, they've got a big flight zone. They're gonna be hard to handle.

Q: Like the difference from 4-H and FFA cattle?

A: That's what I mean. They get totally tame. One thing I emphasize to people: You've got to stop yelling and screaming. For any animal, that's very, very stressful. You've got to not be screaming at 'em.

Q: You designed the fencing and the chutes after observing the way cattle normally move.

A: The reason for making it curved is so when the cattle come out of the crowd pen, they don't see all the people gathered around the squeeze chute. That's one of the things that makes a curved chute work.

Q: Have you observed anything else that you would suggest?

A: One of the important things you've got to do is you've got to get rid of the distractions. Like, look through your chute. Do you see a car parked next to it? A dog's nose sticking in, biting at them? A chain hanging down, a hose, a coat on a fence, anything? This piece of paper on the floor? You've got to get rid of the distractions around the facility. ... That attracts the cattle's attention, and they're going to balk because they're looking at it. The reflection on a puddle or a shadow? I realize you can't get rid of all of them, but if you're aware of those things, then you get the lead animal to cross the shadow and the others will go.

Q: Is that lead animal determined by nature or is it just whichever one happens to be in front?

A: The lead animal is not necessarily the dominant animal. It's usually not the dominant animal at the feed trough. The dominant animal tends to stay in the middle of the herd where it's safe from the predators.

Q: What got you started observing animals?

A: You'll see in the movie, it all started out on my aunt's ranch when I was 15. But I was into horses way before that. When I was 14, I went away to a boarding school that had horses. I'm a horse fanatic. And I had a 4-H horse. At the ranch is where my interest in beef cattle got started. The first work I did in the early '70s was about all the distractions to take out, and they show that beautifully in the movie.

With the curved facilities, some people were doing that. But what I did, I figured out how to lay the whole thing out as a system to make it work. You modify the dip vat. You take out the metal plate so the cattle don't slip.

Q: Does the movie follow your life well?

A: Well, the designs are absolutely impeccable. The dip vat was the real working thing, not just a prop. They actually have some of my drawings in the movie. I was down supervising construction of those things. There are some events that are compressed and changed around, but the projects are accurate. ... Like that gate you can open from the car -- all my projects are done exactly the way they actually are.

Q: Your mother was aware of your autism. How did she spark your creativity?

A: It's important to get kids out doing things. My mother decided to get me out at the ranch. Mother just knew she had to have me doing stuff. Back in the '50s, you know, they pounded some manners in. You've got kids today eating mashed potatoes with their hands because no one corrected them.

Q: Did you have (a revelation) all of a sudden about cows?

A: No, in autism there's never a sudden revelation. It is gradually learning more and more and more. There are certain events that were important. Like early intervention, early education -- I wasn't allowed to just sit in my corner. My science teacher, he got me turned on and studying. In my early 30s I took antidepressant medication. The movie is all pre-antidepressant days, when I was a lot more nervous.

Q: Do you see behaviors in people the same way you do in animals?

A: Most people know social stuff by instinct. I have to learn it by doing, like being in a play. My thinking is very, very logical. Sometimes I'm just amazed at how illogical people can be. I used to be a total "Star Trek" fan. I loved Spock. I like Data, too.