*3.1. Loading*

Average loading time was 26 min and 21 s (from 00:06:00 to 05:00:00) where cattle was loaded from different farms. Course of loading was assessed by the truck drivers, as being good in 81.9%, neutral in 15.7% and bad in 2.4% of cases. According to them, in 10.6% of the loading events no devices (electric cattle prods, sticks or flags) were used, one device in 44.4%, two in 43.2%, three in 10.0%, and four in 2.9% of the events. The devices most used by the drivers to load cattle on the truck were flags (81.7%), sticks (9.1%), electric cattle prods (31.5%) and shouts (49.8%). In 39.3% of the cases only a flag was used as see in Table 1.

Figure 1 shows the trend from which can be concluded that the use of devices such as electric cattle prods and sticks or the use of hard shouts were associated with a neutral or bad course of loading. The use of flags is negatively correlated with the course of loading by the drivers (r = −0.218 *p* = 0.007) and the use of prods (r = 0.189 *p* = 0.022) and shouts (r = 0.197 *p* = 0.022) are positively correlated with the course of loading. The course of loading is expressed as 1 = good/smoothly, without problems; 2 = neutral; 3 = bad/long time needed with many problems.

**Figure 1.** The use of devices in different courses of loading as interpreted by truck driver. \*: Interpretation course of loading by truck driver (1 = good, 2 = neutral, 3 = bad).


**Table 1.** The use of devices when loading cattle.
