New pen/crush

Tomjim

Putting up a new pen. 22 foot crush involved which I am going to block on one side.

4 inch solids on the flat. Will i need to put a pillar block to assist the wall or is there any need.

Is there any need to support the wall. The wall will not be plastered, but I may scud the wall ie throw a bit of mortar on it to keep the blocks together

John_F

what is running through it? beef cattle or dairy, dairy may be more content as they are being handled often and so less rushing.

with that length of a wall the fear is it may crack itself unless it has a very good base, id rather put a rail or something to break the distance halfway. 4" on flat would do grand then id be thinking

also when i was in nz they have the handling facilities set up v well over there and behind the crush or as they used call it the vet race was a semi circular pen and a gate could be swung right up behind the cattle, worked well and worth considering if you can have space to do it

pakalasa

Design it too, so that if an animal goes down in the crush, that it will be easy to take the sides apart and get the animal out. I see a lot of the new crushes have hinged gates on the side. The bars on my two crushes can be pulled back along it's length. Handy too if you want to suckle a new-born calf. You just slide back the bottom bar.
A concrete step along it's length is a disaster too in this respect. Seen it a few times at the local mart, where a bullock would fall down and get trapped between the concrete on both sides. Better to have a removable step of some kind.
Best design I've seen for a crush was on the journal there a few weeks back. It had all these features, complete with driving gate and curved chute.

sea12

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Best design I've seen for a crush was on the journal there a few weeks back. It had all these features, complete with driving gate and curved chute.[/QUOTE]


Yep that design on the farmers journal looked super. It was very well thought out. Cost a good bit though. But He will have it for a lifetime.

Muckit

I agree, it's high time we stop thinking the conventional way ie all pens need to be rectangular, all chutes/races straight, and look at these 'new' circular/curved handling unit designs (which have been used for years in the states/NZ/Austrialia with great success).


But any bit of extra thought/money put in NOW before you build will be well worth it. T

the practical things I'm thinking of adding/changing to my chute are:

1) definitely put in a sliding gate at the rear. You know yourself it's sometimes easier to slide a bar/stake across than swing around a gate. A sliding gate would be even better

2) Put a section (length of one beast) at the front that has bars on both sides that you can access from both sides if needs be. Better still have this section at an angle (like in journal) that when cattle are running up, they think there's nothing up ahead around corner (better to trick rather than try to manhandle:rolleyes:)

3) Down the road, to redesign the section behind chute to be curved so that a forcing gate can be put in to swing around this

We have a chute with blockwwall on one side, built along side of a shed, but it's double wall ie shed had a wall, then we built a second wall outside this (on their edge though, not flat) but i think this was a bit overengineered!:rolleyes: Our slatted shed has the gable wall (over 20') built on the flat along top of slats and length of cubicle (nothing but girders either end and it's ok, so cracks etc, but perhaps more pressure on a crush?

blue5000

I would recommend that OP plasters the wall, rough wall will skin your knuckles when you are trying to catch a head or nose for bolus or dosing.

Cat walk is handy for blood testing, Width is very important too, ours is a couple of inches too wide, cows heads seem to be underneth the belly of the cow in front making TB testing awkward.

Make it easy to load from the front of the crush, I find its very handy on my own. If you have a fragmented farm it might be worth having a mobile 3 pt linkage crush?

dryan

blue5000 wrote: »

If you have a fragmented farm it might be worth having a mobile 3 pt linkage crush?

Now, thats a great idea. could solve a small problem that i have... thanks!