Squeeze Chute

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I do alot of custom cattle working,work with everything from wooden-Hyd. chutes. If a person sorts his calves and cows before they work them,I think an auto head gate is great. Most of the time they want to sort them coming out of the chute or just don't want to mess with sorting them at all. Thats kind of how I formed my opinion on man. vs auto
 
Filson. That's the name of my self catch head gate.

I built all the chutes, guilotines, pens, Medina and cut gates. I hinged the panel on the side of the chute and put in lift panels too. The head gate is the only store bought part. If I miss one out of the self catch, I can recirculate it back through. It is always a hassle to do anything twice so I don't like to miss.
 
WE bought a Priefert SO4 a couple years ago and really like it. I have use a Filson, Blue Mule and an old Universal brand headgate. The only time I have has the auto part miss one is when I set it too wide for a calf. We have has a 2200 lb. bull in ours with no problems. We ran 32 head thru ours yesterday and I missed one calf. My second choice was a Foremost but wanted the auto so I could work by myself if needed. I don't like the swining type gate, prefer the scisor type, basically they self adjust from a calf to a bull without changing anything.
 
Can someone post a picture or a link that shows how the scissor type headgate works? Thanks. I have an antique homemade chute with sort of a half gate at the front and a neckbar that the person catching swings down to catch the animal with. (I am dreaming of a High Hog chute from Canada, but can't seem to get those lottery numbers right) I have seen the kind of self catching head gate that is two side by side doors that open inward into the chute and the animal kind of hits them and they swing in toward each other to the flat position.

How do the scissor types work?
 
Angus/Brangus, it was my wife's noise that was worse than the rattle of the cows. I tried to stay calm and cool and just let them out after which all settled down like nothing had happened, even the wife.

Billy
 
bgm":2xxdf0mi said:
I have a preifert and have been very happy with it.

I'd think carefully about the powder river value chutes. Here's the line of concern from their website.
The value chute is not designed for bulls or cows that weigh over 1100 lbs.

That was enough to scare me off when I bought mine.

I bought this economy model and it works pretty good. My Angus weigh around 1100 -1300 lbs. If it breaks I have a welder and can fix it cheaper than buying a more expensive one up front.
 
Hippie Rancher":22y9999y said:
Can someone post a picture or a link that shows how the scissor type headgate works? Thanks. I have an antique homemade chute with sort of a half gate at the front and a neckbar that the person catching swings down to catch the animal with. (I am dreaming of a High Hog chute from Canada, but can't seem to get those lottery numbers right) I have seen the kind of self catching head gate that is two side by side doors that open inward into the chute and the animal kind of hits them and they swing in toward each other to the flat position.

How do the scissor types work?

http://www.priefert.com/dynamic/product ... EM_NO=HG91
 
Hippie Rancher":306s0nnv said:
Thanks kb5iod - I was looking at that the other night. I can see how it works manually - sliding together, but how does it work in self catch? What and where is the trigger?

I haven't had mine very long and haven't tried the auto catch. However, the best I can tell there is a small lever near the top that controls a notched flat piece of metal. There are "ears" along the sliding top section of the gate that fit in these notches. The ears barely catch the notches and create somewhat of a hair trigger that is tripped when the cow touches the gate as she sticks her head through. I may be way off on this so maybe someone more familiar with the auto mechanism will give a description.
 
dun":z2d4glcq said:
:lol: I am laughing in appreciation here! no wonder that thread with all the dun puns is getting so long - you deserve your mentor status many times over.

Not to diminish your answer kb5iod - that helped too. :tiphat:

I see how it locks but I am still having trouble figuring out the actual trigger. Does the animal squeeze her head through the opening and that makes the plate with the holes drop into position? or does something actually make the gates slide together somehow? Seems like there has to be some movement of the gates or she could just pull her head right back out???

dun, I think you will have to do multiple short videos of each relevant part in motion and post them on YouTube or something :lol: :p ;-)
 
Hippie Rancher":1mp5doeo said:
I see how it locks but I am still having trouble figuring out the actual trigger. Does the animal squeeze her head through the opening and that makes the plate with the holes drop into position? or does something actually make the gates slide together somehow?

The gates are spring loaded. As the animal bumps the sides of the openeing the plate with the holes swings down realeasing the pins that are in the spacer holes in the plate. It's one of those deals that if you saw it once it would make sense.
 
As the animal bumps the sides of the openeing the plate with the holes swings down realeasing the pins that are in the spacer holes in the plate.

I think I got it now - the pins and holes are holding it OPEN. I was thinking they were the locking mechanism - the "end position." So the plate actually flips up out of the way? Is that right? Where are the locking and closing parts - what moves and keeps the doors together? Just springs? that sounds kind of dangerous.

Appreciate your patience.
 
Hippie Rancher":15chlkcy said:
As the animal bumps the sides of the openeing the plate with the holes swings down realeasing the pins that are in the spacer holes in the plate.

I think I got it now - the pins and holes are holding it OPEN. I was thinking they were the locking mechanism - the "end position." So the plate actually flips up out of the way? Is that right? Where are the locking and closing parts - what moves and keeps the doors together? Just springs? that sounds kind of dangerous.

Appreciate your patience.

In the first picture, just to the right of the handle is a squarish looking box with a bar sticking out of it. The box is the looking mechanism, there's also the exact same thing on the other side. The pins and the plate hold it open against spring pressure, the spring is in the middle bottom of the first picture. You can pull or push, your choice, on the sides of the neck catching deal and it won;t open any further. The only way to defeat the looking mechanism is buy raising the handle. Ther doors are held closed by a combination of the lock boxes and the fulcrum points of the doors themselves.
 
Priefert is the way to go! We have the SO4, and had the chance to purchase a Powder River. Big mistake! First of all, unknown to us, this particular chute had a malfunctioning headgate, it wouldn't release, so now you have a cow in there that needs to get out, and we have had to practically take the headgate apart to get the cow out. Also baby calves could go back through the tailgate because the bars were too far apart.

We called Powder River and the rep told us that they had had a recall on this particular chute, but of course we were too late, so we ended up replacing that. But after working with the Priefert, it was just too much work and harder to handle. We have just purchased our second Priefert.
 
Brute 23":64a6sayp said:
THe stampede steel ones are nice but I think they run around $8K... :shock: ... hard to justify with 20 head. :lol:

I like the Preifert with just the manual head gate on it. ;-)

They are the Caddillac (stampede) and I paid 4000.00 for mine last summer
 

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