Designing facilities - looking for input

[milkmaid]

So I'm working on redesigning some facilities for someone... probably working 50-100 head a year through the chute, sorting more frequently through the alley. Cattle are okay to handle, would probably be better with better facilities. Nothing real mean or loco though. The people have owned cattle many years but don't work the cattle much (something I'm hoping this can change). The facilities need to be user-friendly.

If the color shows up (perimeter fences, half the alley), it marks the fences that currently exist. There's an alley along the back of the shed with a chute right now (marked as need to close off). The shed is 3 sided and faces the opposite direction from the working pens. Usually calves are wintered back there.

I hate tubs with a passion so put a Bud Box on the back of this working setup. The arrows in the Bud Box I drew to indicate the way gates swing and cattle move - if you've seen one you understand, if you haven't it isn't relevant to the general facilities question. I'm trying to minimize the number of pens/fences/gates while installing enough to actually get something done. There's currently pastures or other pens that cattle can be sent to out of the sorting alley. The pasture noted by the arrow as "to pasture" is large and wraps around behind the Bud Box as well.

I numbered pens to make them easy to discuss. It's not completely to scale. What do y'all think? are there more efficient ways to set this up? The biggest potential issue I see is that cattle can only be sent to one pen when they leave the chute. However, the sorting alley would make it incredibly easy to sort animals afterwards if needed. Thoughts, comments?

 

[cowgirl8]

We have 2 holding pens where the chute lets out and a hinged partition that can funnel them to one or the other when we let them out. Each holding pen will hold about 30 cows and they can be emptied to the big part of the corral. This has come in handy in sorting out of the chute. We get one that we want to sell, she's funneled into a holding out of the chute. Once the pens are full , we empty out one and hold the sorted cows in their pen.
If i have time i'll draw you what we have. 2 people can work a herd of 100 easy. My husband and i can worm, vaccinate, retag and sort a large herd and be done by lunch. My husband designed the corrals and with the help of the welder, we got a great set of corrals. We liked them so much we had him build another set just like it on the other end of our place. It has a tub though but you could use the buddy pen instead. I like our tub. We also have one hand chains. The first set of corrals is perfect, but when they made the second someone didnt do the chains right and we havent changed them but cuss every time we work cows in them because the chains arent right. Thats only been going on 25 years..lol
We bought some stadium seating from a school and it had a long metal walkway. We plan to add that to our alleyway for pour on wormer. It will make that job so much easier.

 

[TexasBred]

Sort of scribbled this out and it is not to scale but used this set of working pens on the dairy. Do not judge the utility of the pens by my poor artwork. :lol2: All the gates swung both directions and not only locked the pen they connected but two gates could be opened and combine into a complete side to an otherwise open pen. Every exit gate was a potential loading or unloading area with. The smaller pens were used to keep cattle that would need a repeat treatment of any kind and/or a cow and new calf. All pens had waterers and the working area, chute and headgate were covered and lighted. All built out of cross ties and 1x6 oak treated lumber. May give you an idea. Does not have to be this large but this will accomodate 100+ mature cows at any one time.

 

[Caustic Burno]

Lot of good ideas on this site.

http://www.cps.gov.on.ca/english/bc1000/beef.htm

 

[milkmaid]

Thanks CB, there's some good designs on there.

TB- I like the facility, my biggest concern is that anything harder to handle than the typical dairy cow won't flow well through the facilities. I'm looking at the corners going from the holding pens into the alley toward the chute... quiet cattle would move slow enough to see the entrance to the alley but I'd worry anything hot would just see the opposite fence and come back over top of you. What did you think when you used the setup?

In light of not judging the facilities by your artistic abilities ;-) I won't assume anything - did you feel the alley was long enough leading to the chute? Sometimes I feel like the hotter the cattle the longer the alley needs to be. Worst design I ever saw had a chute coming off a tub, designed by a dairy ET group for some really hot Angus range heifers. For holding and moving cattle around I like those pens though, reserving judgment on the alley and chute. ;-)

 

[cowgirl8]

milkmaid, now that i look at your plans, if you put the chute coming into the other side with an alley way down the middle of the big pen and the two others, thats what ours is like...i'll try to draw it and post a picture later

 

[Nesikep]

I don't know if it's just not drawn in the plans, but I like it if you can open the gates INTO the sorting alley as well.

On the corner before the chute, I'd perhaps move upward in the picture to where #5 and #2 meet so that it's less of a turn, The cows will also get a good view of the ones that are in #5 already and perhaps be a little more willing to go into the squeeze. This would put the squeeze at about a 45 degree angle, don't know if that's a problem for anyone?

What do you plan for loading facilities? Depending on how access is, I'd put a loading dock of sorts right where the chute turns into #5, If you plan to load into low trailers, make it so the trailer blocks all chances of getting out which would only require a couple rails, and a gate that closes the chute to the squeeze while at the same time opening the loading dock... that's what we have and it works good...
For us, we have a headgate and about 15 feet of chute before it (holds 2 cows), and the loading ramp (high loader) goes off the the side of it and turns so it's parallel to the headgate, this leaves about 8 feet between the high loading dock and headgate/squeeze. We can back a low trailer into that area and open the side of the squeeze to send them there.

I found cattle prefer to go UP a chute rather than DOWN it... Flat works good too... just something I would keep in mind if I had to do mine over.. it's downhill and it's a PAIN to get them into it.

TB, you draw that with a 3/8th tip marker?

 

[Brute 23]

Too much open ground to sort in. Sort off your chute.

Where would you load from?

List the things you need.

Example:
Main Holding pen
Chute
Cow holding pen
Calf holding pen
Access to pasture 1
Access to pasture 2

Design from there

 

[Caustic Burno]

I took this basic design and refined it a little for me and 40 cows.
Works really well, no one size fits all here. After building several sets of working pens
through the years this happened to be the best one tweaked for me.
Also did a lot of scratchin with a pencil and Big Chief tablet to minimize material waste.
http://www.cps.gov.on.ca/english/plans/ ... /1831L.pdf

This is it tweaked I didn't like the loading chute on the original or square corners.

 

[TexasBred]

Thanks CB, there's some good designs on there.

TB- I like the facility, my biggest concern is that anything harder to handle than the typical dairy cow won't flow well through the facilities. I'm looking at the corners going from the holding pens into the alley toward the chute... quiet cattle would move slow enough to see the entrance to the alley but I'd worry anything hot would just see the opposite fence and come back over top of you. What did you think when you used the setup?

In light of not judging the facilities by your artistic abilities ;-) I won't assume anything - did you feel the alley was long enough leading to the chute? Sometimes I feel like the hotter the cattle the longer the alley needs to be. Worst design I ever saw had a chute coming off a tub, designed by a dairy ET group for some really hot Angus range heifers. For holding and moving cattle around I like those pens though, reserving judgment on the alley and chute. ;-)

I probably should have made more effort to draw it to scale. The alley leading to the chute was about 30 feet long. Note too that there is a small containment area just before entering the chute and the gate to that can be used as a crowd gate. Even beef cattle flowed easily thru the entire system with gates being the primary tool for directing cattle.

 

[milkmaid]

OK TB, that makes sense now. Thanks!

Neiskep- thanks for the tip about the ground, that's something I hadn't thought about. The area by the shed *is* higher than at the bottom of the pen 5 - I'll be back in the Idaho area early next week and will have to look at it again to see if the slope would be significant enough.

Brute 23- I get the point about open ground, but I really like a good sorting alley, don't mind sorting off a chute but I like to not have to run cattle through it in order to sort.

CB- is that fence steel pipe with calf panels? How does it hold up? Complaints? comments? I've seen plenty of steel pipe with cable or just multiple steel bars, and cattle can be pretty hard on that over time. Suspect the calf panel does pretty well since cattle can't put their head through it?

Others- where would you put a loading chute/alley in this deal? At the moment cattle are loaded out of the alley - stock trailer backed up to the end of the alley at the top of the paper. Not ideal and it takes two or three people, but... Part of the issue is it's currently really difficult to get a vehicle from the top of the page to anywhere below the shed (fences, terrain, etc). There's a fence that evidently didn't show up when I scanned it; it runs horizontally from the back of the shed across the right of the paper.

What if I had a straight alley coming off the top of the Bud Box, parallel to the direction the shed faces (opposite corner from the alley to the chute)? I've never *seen* a Bud Box with two routes for cattle to leave, but I assume it'd work...? I think that would allow vehicle access to load cattle.

How wide do y'all make your alleys? Cows? calves?

 

[Caustic Burno]

Pen is made of drill stem with 4 inch by 4 inch panel welded in.
The entire pen is an octagon welded together drill stem on top and bottom with
the vertical runs concreted in the ground. It has held some wild Tigers in it's day.
I have had them try and jump it and bounce off every side, had one or two put me out as well.
I found the Brimmer girls are a lot easier to work when they can see and don't feel trapped.
I have replaced a few of the cheap sorting gates through the years. As I aged I have opted for
calmer cattle due to a mental short I enjoyed the wilder ones when I was younger.
The way the pen is designed you are always behind a gate when working the cattle.
As far as loading chute it is designed to load out three different ways, you can back up to the head gate
and load through it. The head gate is also hinged to open for trailers that have one swinging gate.
To the right of the head gate the pen makes a vee that I back my gooseneck up to and swing both gates open.
The cattle can be loaded through an angle chute using a gate to making the chute.
I left part of the old pen and you can drive through like at the salebarn to unload.
Maybe you can see what I am talking about in the picture.

 

[backhoeboogie]

Brute 23- I get the point about open ground, but I really like a good sorting alley, don't mind sorting off a chute but I like to not have to run cattle through it in order to sort.


?

My alley is 375 feet long and 30 feet wide. The cows are rotated to 4 pastures and I take them thru the alley every time. They cannot wait to get in the alley. Trap gates on the working end. Cut gates for sorting.

Medina trap gates take care of minor things.



I still have a couple of minor tweaks I want to do to my holding pens.

Most proud of my portable units.

 

[cypressfarms]

Boy those Texas hills look great!

 

[greybeard]

Small one I use. I don't keep over 30 pairs at any time so didn't need much but it works for me.

 

[Dave]

One feature I don't like is one that has the chute out in the middle of a pen. I want some restriction (gate) that doesn't allow a cow to come back down the side of the chute I am working from. I have an old friend that let a cow out of the chute. She swapped ends and came right back at him breaking his leg. I have had them come back and spill the vaccines etc. I now have an 8 foot gate that is set so I can easily pass through it to get to the off side of the chute. It is mounted in such a way that a weak spring that keeps it swung closed. And there is a post to keep it from swinging too far.

 

[WalnutCrest]

I'm going to have a little project like this some time this summer / fall ... this is good food for thought to make sure I don't miss something stupid.