Headgate or chute?

[Anonymous]

For about a 25 cow herd will just a headgate work? Have been borrowing a portable chute but won't to have something here all the time. If I mount the headgate alone on good heavy posts would you concrete them in? Also thought about a good heavy gate on one side so i could let them out the side as on a chute? Any thoughts on that? Thanks for any ideas.

 

[dun]

Before we got this chute, we used a set up pretty much as you described. We had heavy gates on both sides, 8 footers. We also had 3 foot gates right behind them so we could get in behind the cow without having to climb over rails or open the side gate. With calm animals it works great. The alleyway set up to get the cow into the headgate part is more important. A chute is handy for having to work on udders or feet, or completly restrict the animals ability to wobble around ones caught. I wouldn't get rid of the chute for anything, but we still use a headgate only for setting up a quicky catch pen if we just have to catch one cow/calf and it's too much of a distance to get them to the chute.

dun

For about a 25 cow herd will just a headgate work? Have been borrowing a portable chute but won't to have something here all the time. If I mount the headgate alone on good heavy posts would you concrete them in? Also thought about a good heavy gate on one side so i could let them out the side as on a chute? Any thoughts on that? Thanks for any ideas.