Small Acreage Dry (feed) Lot

[rlrobinhood]

Hi all,

We have a small 7 acre place and my daughter loves agriculture. She's been raising three pigs each year for the last the last couple years. About 9 months ago, she acquired some Scottish Highlands cow, calf, and a heifer. With this small of an acreage, we have been doing intensive rotational grazing and it is working. We have enough feed. But, I want to be able to dry lot them in the spring to give the grass a jump start before we rotational graze again.

Attached is a corral design that I want to build this spring. What do you think of it considering the maximum cattle we would have would be two cows and two calves. The majority of the time it would be a cow/calf and a heifer. Is this large enough to drylot this scenario for a couple months until the grass is ready to start grazing? I want the ability to take care of a calving cow or sick cow. What do you think of the size of the maternity/sick pen?

Any recommendations you would make on any of this? Easier to address it now before its built, lol. OH, and what do you think of letting three pigs co-habitat with the cows for about a month before we turn the cows out on grass?

Many thanks and please, let me know any and all thoughts!!

 

[SBMF 2015]

Hi all,

We have a small 7 acre place and my daughter loves agriculture. She's been raising three pigs each year for the last the last couple years. About 9 months ago, she acquired some Scottish Highlands cow, calf, and a heifer. With this small of an acreage, we have been doing intensive rotational grazing and it is working. We have enough feed. But, I want to be able to dry lot them in the spring to give the grass a jump start before we rotational graze again.

Attached is a corral design that I want to build this spring. What do you think of it considering the maximum cattle we would have would be two cows and two calves. The majority of the time it would be a cow/calf and a heifer. Is this large enough to drylot this scenario for a couple months until the grass is ready to start grazing? I want the ability to take care of a calving cow or sick cow. What do you think of the size of the maternity/sick pen?

Any recommendations you would make on any of this? Easier to address it now before its built, lol. OH, and what do you think of letting three pigs co-habitat with the cows for about a month before we turn the cows out on grass?

Many thanks and please, let me know any and all thoughts!!

40x60 would make a great pole barn and fence in a 1/2 acre lot attached to that. I like the 12x12 stalls and working alley. That just doesn't give you much room left if that is the only place the cattle get to stay. In less you plan on concreting the floor it will turn in to a muddy mess.

Okay, not to get to graphic, but pigs with feed lot steers is okay. Pigs with cows, calves, or feed lot heifers is a no no.
Forty years ago lots of guys ran hogs behind their fat cattle. They fed shell corn in self to the cattle. The hogs will sort through the cattle manure and eat the shell corn that passes through the cattle. Hogs are smart and omnivorous. It doesn't take them long to figure out that if they bite a heifer 's vulva, she will stand up, stretch, and poop. Pigs have been known to chew the vulva off fat hfrs. This just opens the door to infection, and calving/breeding problems.

Good Luck.

 

[Little Joe]

I wouldn't want the pigs in there, it'll get muddy with just the cows but I'd think it'd be a mess with pigs in also. I'd put the pigs in a separate pen.

 

[Peace]

You don't want to put the cows in with the pigs, nothing good can happen and plenty of bad can and probably will. After you move the cows out of the corral and onto pasture, I would put the pigs in the corral. Believe it or not, they'll turn that corral, which will probably be a muddy, crappy mess of manure into what would I would call very rich dirt, along the lines of a mulch dirt.

Around 1980 we kept our replacement heifers at a barn about 1/2 mile from our dairy barn. We kept about 60 or so in an area about 30 x 60 with a feed bunk around the outside. It was in Wisconsin, so in the winter we'd bed and and by the time spring rolled around and the cattle could go back outside onto pasture, that straw pack (way more crap than straw) would probably be about 18" deep. The first year we did this, it was the most horrible job to fork that out into a manure wagon. The next year I had about 12 feeder pigs and my dad told me to split the barn in half, giving half of the area to the pigs and the other half to the heifers. It took the pigs about 5 months to turn that into a fantastic mulch. They just tore it up with their snouts and did their thing. Of course we still fed them a usual diet of feed, but they still tore up that straw pack like it owed them money.

 

[rlrobinhood]

Thanks for all the replies. So, keep the pigs separate. Got it.

I should also point out that my schematic wasn't very clear. Its a schematic for a corral and the only structure is the lean-to shed that is 36x12 (the three 12x12 compartments). The rest will be gates and fence that I'll build out of 2 7/8" oilfield pipe and suckerod. Hope this paints the scenario a bit better.

Also, I'm in NW WY. It is very dry here. We get about 9" of moisture a year. I don't think this area will get muddy. I believe it will stay high and dry.

So, my goal with this is to be able to safely handle the cattle when they need doctored, separate out a calving cow, and dry lot them in the spring to allow the grass to get a good start. Considering the most animals we would have is 2 cow/calf pairs, do you think this is sufficient? Any recommended changes?

 

[rlrobinhood]

Any other thoughts on this? Do you think this is big enough and designed right to dry lot at most two cow-calves for 2-3 months? Thanks again. I just want to be sure I build it right the first time. Many thanks.

 

[shaz]

The pigs will also clean up some of the cow manure.

 

[cjmc]

Any other thoughts on this? Do you think this is big enough and designed right to dry lot at most two cow-calves for 2-3 months? Thanks again. I just want to be sure I build it right the first time. Many thanks.

Most common number I see in feedlots is 150-200 square feet/hd. So it would probably hold up to about 10-13 head of cattle comfortably.

 

[rlrobinhood]

thanks so much for all the input. Any thoughts on the layout? Would you change anything in that?

 

[BigBear56]

I think the amount of space you have as well as you chute layout are fine. There's lots of articles out there in minimum space requirements for pairs. We currently have 3 pairs in a 25'x60' area with about half that space under roof. That's plenty for them but dealing with the straw pack as others mentioned could be a pain. We've gone through much more straw than I figured but I attribute a lot of that to the extreme weather we've had the last couple months.