What is Stress Free Stockmanship?

Stress Free Stockmanship is a way of combining the very best of many strands of animal and livestock reasearch and practice.  It is not the reteaching of any single theme or of any individual’s knowledge.

Stress Free Stockmanship is all about animal handlers having all the skills necessary to enable animals to initiate new, learned behaviours that positively impact people and landscapes.

SFS brings thinking from individuals such as Bud Williams, Temple Grandin, Fred Provenza and Bruce Maynard into understandable, practical packages that make an immediate difference to animals, people and economics of businesses.  It also incorporates behavioural, swarm theory and animal training research as this fast moving scientific field gathers pace.

Isn’t this Low Stress Stockhandling?

No, not entirely, quite a bit more than that.  Some of the elements of the Low Stress methods that the brilliant Bud Williams pioneered do form a basis for SFS but many do not as new knowledge has evolved.

This is not to deride in any way those that practice LSS type approaches that Bud began and that others have continued.  Their methods are a very good introductory approach to this field and should be encouraged.

Improved stockhandling is a good starting point on the journey toward Stockmanship skills that can influence landscapes at a high level.

Why we think this is important.

We believe that it is important for people, animals and the landscape- in that order.

Firstly, we recognise that when people can see and experience for themselves how SFS works with their own animals then many of the frustrations, time wasting and hard work disappears.  This is a very good result for individuals and especially rewarding for teams of people.

Secondly, the effect on animals is profound as they very visibly change their behaviour to increase their production, reproduction and willingness to initiate new behaviours.

Thirdly, landscape effects can be massive and long lasting as grazing behaviours are affected thereby altering the ways that plants regenerate soils.