Need help building cattle chute

[ollie']

Utah how many steers are you going to be working through the set up each year? How big will the steers be at their biggest size? A little more info will help. I have one chute allyway set up in a basement of an old barn that is all wood. One side of the chute tightens against the cattle and the head catch is a stanchion type. Slots behind the cattle for a pole as well. I don't use it but I have used it and it worked fine. It is about 50 or 75 years old I would guess. Could be older the barn is a hundred years old. It is a rent farm and I set portable pens more centrally located but the old wood ones sure would serve the purpose if they were at the barn.

 

[Utah]

how many steers are you going to be working through the set up each year? How big will the steers be at their biggest size?

I will run at most 8 steers or heifers at a time. The biggest they'd be would be just alfter calving - that is if I get any pregnant cows this winter. I guess everything but bulls.

Maybe I could just run some of my heavy duty horse panels about 28 inches out from my corral fence line. Of course I'd have to shore up the fence.

What do you all think of using 4' x 8' OSB plywood secured to a strong fence line AND also the heavy panels? Then maybe I could get some boards to insert behind them to keep them from backing out. Would this be strong enough If I had 16 feet of plywood attached on both sides? This wouldn't cost too much - only 4 sheets of OSB and it wouldn't be permanent.

How do you keep wild ones from jumping up and over the walls?
Ugh! Sorry to be such a beginner. I don't know anyone around here that could even help other than to tell me I don't know what I am doing and I feed my cows too much.

 

[TK Ranch]

Utah that sounds like it will work just fine. Keep the sheets of osb about 1 foot off the ground that will give you 5' instead of 4. As for what other people think and say we all had to start somewhere in this buissness of raising cattle, no matter what every one says we were all beginers at one point and i dont care how long you have been farming or ranching you can learn something new every day. To bad you arent in my neck of the woods I'd come over and help. If it wasn't for the folks around here helping us out at the start i think i would of quit. good luck and let me know how you made out

TK

 

[icandoit]

Seems like I have heard of used guardrail that wasn't so expensive. Don't know how tight you are with money, but it is an alternitive.

Dick

 

[cypressfarms]

How do you keep wild ones from jumping up and over the walls?
Ugh! Sorry to be such a beginner. I don't know anyone around here that could even help other than to tell me I don't know what I am doing and I feed my cows too much.

You can keep them from going up by using 2x4's, plywood, or anything alse you have. I like to nail 2x4's across the alley way. It keeps the alley from being pushed out, and keeps em from going up.

One word of caution though: some cattle spook when you try to push them into an area with a top. They feel threatened, and then they will really get wild.

 

[DiamondSCattleCo]

Utah,

The first couple years that I had livestock, I simply dug a couple fenceposts in beside my corral fence, about 28" away. Then I took light fence panels, put them on either side of the 'alley' and chained the ends to the posts. I built a solid door on a hinge at one end of the alley, and at the other end, I attached a panel (with chain to the post) that would swing open the full 12 foot.

I'd push the stock, one at a time, down the corral fence, into my 'chute'. When they got into the last section of chute, I'd put a fence post behind them, then unchain the back end of the corral panel and push it up against the corral fence. I had a sort of squeeze then If I had to do it all over again, I'd use an 8 foot section on this last part so it woukld squeeze smaller animals better.

It was crude, but I was broke, and it did work for vaccinations and treating minor ailments. A couple years later, a neighbor gave me an old scissors manual headgate, and I thought I was in heaven then And yep, the light panels did work as long as I didn't get pushing the stock hard. Once they were in the last section and squeezed up, the light panel was plenty to hold em.

Rod

 

[Beef11]

When i got started i either used somone elses chute or roped them. It seems to work pretty well even without a horse but if you've never roped anything i wouldn't recomend starting on anything bigger than 300 lbs. Definetly the cheapest way though Drop a loop on'm then another give them the shot and turn them loose. The turning them loose is actually the tricky part its easiest if you have a quick release on 1 of the 2 ropes and take it off last. Its the old school method that was around way before Preifert built their first chute.

 

[ctlbaron]

We've got a barn built out of red oak thats over a hundred years old. If white oak is 10 times better I guess it's good for 1,000 years huh. 8)