Cattle Handling Systems

[perfecho]

nice!!!!!

[smcgrath76]

Have thought of siding in the side that the operator runs up and down on and leaving the other side open for visibility...where the cows would see other cows and where they came from......does this make sense?

I would do the exact opposite. If the cows can see you you can work their flight zone and as you walk back the chute they will move up. We have one chute that is solid sided with a tub at the end and it is the worst system I have ever used. Our open sided Lakeland is very fast largely because of the bud box and the fact that the cattle can see you.

For reference - close sided chute AI averages over 5 minutes per cow.
Open sided AI averages 2 minutes per cow including catching, thawing and inseminating.

On our open sided system we can easily run 90 to 100 head per hour preg checking with 2 people plus the vet.

Bud boxes are my favourite way to load cattle into a truck or chute. We use a box with feeder pens to load trucks in the yard and have trained the truckers to stay by their truck. They switch gates in the truck and tell us how many they want. It is very rare it would take more than 10 minutes to load a pot.

[perfecho]

Great, thanks Sean...I get what you are saying.... the loading bud box.....do you load single file or width of trailer? (On Ground trailer loading)

[smcgrath76]

Great, thanks Sean...I get what you are saying.... the loading bud box.....do you load single file or width of trailer? (On Ground trailer loading)

Our loading chute widths are not adjustable so cows/bulls go up single and calves usually go up in doubles.

[woodland]

What size is your bud box Sean ? We use a 12 foot tub and when loading the top deck or belly of a liner the animals have to start down the alley before you can latch the tub gate which usually happens anyways. This wouldn't be possible in a bud box would it? We are ripping out our old system and starting from scratch in a new site. We're probably keeping the same tub, alley, and squeeze but it never hurts looking at other options.
Our sidekicks that get put in the shop since "they can't help themselves " either in the corral. Invaluable in the field and bush though.

[newguy]

bought some corral panels from a online auction in Regina.Looked up the company name on them.The company that makes the is in China.Most of the new stuff in that online auction comes in right from China.

[WiltonRanch]

bought some corral panels from a online auction in Regina.Looked up the company name on them.The company that makes the is in China.Most of the new stuff in that online auction comes in right from China.

It's quite light but if it's cheap enough and you have a place it'll work it's not bad. Unless this is heavier stuff coming from off shore.

Richies seems to have a bunch of the same at their sales.

[smcgrath76]

What size is your bud box Sean ? We use a 12 foot tub and when loading the top deck or belly of a liner the animals have to start down the alley before you can latch the tub gate which usually happens anyways. This wouldn't be possible in a bud box would it? We are ripping out our old system and starting from scratch in a new site. We're probably keeping the same tub, alley, and squeeze but it never hurts looking at other options.
Our sidekicks that get put in the shop since "they can't help themselves " either in the corral. Invaluable in the field and bush though.

Our bud box at the end of our squeeze is 14 x 20 and is built with hi-hog panels and a hi-hog overhead gate. We hung plywood on the covered areas using 2" U clamps, so it is quiet.
Our box for the loading chute is really more of a long narrow pen at the end of the chute. It can hold up 100 calves if we pack it. It is roughly 14' x 40'. We have other pens that lead into it that we can pre-sort into. For example, if we are loading a split load of calves/cows, we would put calves into the box and have cows pre-sorted into groups before the box. We sometimes overfill and then step in to cut off the flow. The only issue we have with it is that our ground loading chute would be better if it were just a bit shorter (the chute, not the box).

[eddie81]

Arrowquip has some pretty sweet handling setups. Just posted the videos on their new chutes and portable, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pruik3GReGk&t=1s

[woodland]

We purchased a arrow squeeze and portable tub and alley combination last fall. The squeeze worked great especially the head catcher for brisket tagging the bred heifers. The tub and alley worked fine as well however there is a design flaw with it. There is vertical square tubing that ends about a foot above ground and is sharp enough to cut a leg to the bone if an animals leg slips out and is pulled back up by the animal.

This is a picture of where it happened on ours.

And the damage to a perfectly good bred heifer that we stitched up but weren't able to save since it froze up and got infected bad enough that I put her down.

The retailer was very helpful and passed along the information to the company and said that arrow's territory manager would contact me to discuss this. It's been two weeks and all that's happened is they mailed some plastic plugs to put in the tubing. Still awaiting to talk to someone. Thought pretty highly of them till this happened and we've only run 700 head through this setup. Just a warning to anyone with a similar system to check it out.

[grassfarmer]

Hey Woodland thanks for that!- we have the same system and had the same issue - about 4 animals badly cut and we could never figure out where they were getting cut - we were always looking further forward in the system for the offending part. Will do something to remedy that.

Don't know if you saw this earlier post of mine highlighting another problem wit that system?
[URL="https://www.agriville.com/threads/31999-crowding-tub-hazard"]http://https://www.agriville.com/threads/31999-crowding-tub-hazard[/URL]

As an aside what type head catcher do you use? the scissor one? I use the straight bar neck extenders and find they are little use when doing head work on an animal.

[perfecho]

Have the straight bar neck extenders as well.....not really much of a benefit....

[woodland]

Thanks for pointing that out grassfarmer as ours is the same design. Ours has the scissor in front of the head gate and it works great. It's adjustable vertically and the only picture I've got of it is with a cow and it's set too low. When we brisket tag bred heifers we could 30 an hour with haltering each one. Now we do 45 an hour without a halter.

[grassfarmer]

I should have gone with that neck option but I just thought it looked so clumsy and the handle is something you'd be tripping over. When we go to tattoo yearlings or big calves they just drop to their knees and the head goes right to the ground even underneath the neck extender bars. So with the neck held in this scissor deal what happens if they fall to their knees or do you use a sternum bar?

[woodland]

Occasionally the heifers will go down after catching their head. Sometimes you can still tag them if their hide is loose or else you release the head and sides and they should stand up. Had the same problem with haltering anyways. We had a sternum bar in our stampede hydraulic squeeze and sometimes they would get legs on the wrong side of it so we removed it. I've got to think it's pretty hard on the animals to put weight on it when they do go down. Also can't run small calves through it with the bar installed.