Wow, lots of great pictures! How old is your little heifer? I can tell you really like her, and I suspect she's rather friendly???
When I looked at your post this morning, it reminded me of our working area which we just had redone last fall by a fellow who is an expert at this; it took him about 5 minutes to configure it and less than a day to actually do it. I took some photos this afternoon so you could see! We have a small herd, and now that this area has been redone, I am able to bring in 5-6 cattle at a time for the vet; I can also load them onto a trailer backed up to the chute. The working area is surrounded by corral panels. The vet can park her truck just outside a corral panel gate, very close to the chute. I bring cows and calves in here even when I don't have to, just to get them used to it....dress rehearsal, so to speak, and I give them food after they've walked through. The alley is 29" wide (small cattle); calves can turn around in there, but cows cannot.
This picture is what I wanted to share with you; it shows an outside board about a foot off the ground that you can stand on and lean over into the alley to reach an animal if you need to tweak its tail (sometimes mine get bogged down and won't move through -- tail tweaking doesn't always work either :???: ):
The next one shows the space to the left of the above photo; the silver gate moves just one way, like a sweep, to push the animal into the alley. Once I get the cow headed in the right direction, the silver gate works like a charm. I have a chain that can wrap around the oak boards and the gate so the animal can't back out (nobody has so far). The green gate closes in the next animal to go through the alley.
The next picture shows the silver gate in place to keep the animal from backing out of the alley on their way to the chute (you can see the chain hanging there).
Last view is looking down the alley toward the chute.
