'BIG HUG' HYDRAULIC CRUSH

In the early days of deer farming the attempts to handle deer were mostly by trial and error or by adapting existing types of livestock handling equipment. Some of these attempts worked to a degree, some were unmitigated disasters, resulting in losses of many deer through injury or escapes.

However, there is a method by which we can arrive at handling methods and equipment that work. Whenever you try something that goes wrong, stop what you are doing and ask yourself “What did I do wrong?”  It is counterproductive to try and force deer to fit into your ideas of the way things should work.

Remember this. Deer cannot do anything wrong, they can only react to the situation into which WE have put them.

We owe it to the deer and ourselves to make any handling session as stress free as possible.

You may already have come across the work of Dr Temple Grandin who is famous for her work on animal behaviour and for design of handling equipment. If not you can find her on

Grandin.com and I suggest her article on Design of Restraint Systems is well worth the read.

Naming the hydraulic crush “The Big Hug” is my acknowledgement of her work.