firesweepranch
Well-known member
OK, so looking at the Go Bob web site for hay feeders led me to look at the calving sheds they have. Has anyone seen these? What is your thought? Since we are so small, and everything until recently has been halter broke, we had no need for something like this.We have no head catch system, and just use the grooming chute to AI all the cattle. We have a 100 x 50 foot pad set up for our barn when we built our house last April, but have not been able to put a barn in yet. So, we were just waiting, however when we had the nightmare calving in December (remember the HUGE calf out of a heifer, heifer down for two weeks... not halter broke so hard to get calf pulled). We had another calf from a non-halter broke heifer on Saturday, and would have loved to have a facility to put the heifer in where we could have assisted. Everything was fine, but she is one mean cow when labor started, and every time we would check on her she would jump up and try to ram the fence. She had the calf 3 hours after breaking her water, without any problems, but I would have liked to have someplace to run her to we could check her. Then, her calf did not stand and suckle for 4 HOURS! I panicked, because I knew the window was 2 hours but once again I could not get near the cold calf, nor the cow because she was VERY protective! She was in a pen with a shed, but no gates to crowd her into or safe place to run her to dry the calf and get it going. Calf is fine, and now 3 days old and doing great, I just wish I had some sort of facility. This barn advertised on GoBob is pretty nice looking, with a head catch and "half gates" where you can lock the cows out but allow the calves to get in out of the weather or even creep!
So does anyone have any experience with something like this? We will build our barn, but not in the next 12 months. The rest of our herd that is calving (5 more) are all halter broke so it will be no problems working with the heifers/cow if we need to.
Thanks for your advice!
The pic is of the cow and calf we had Saturday; a Club King calf!
So does anyone have any experience with something like this? We will build our barn, but not in the next 12 months. The rest of our herd that is calving (5 more) are all halter broke so it will be no problems working with the heifers/cow if we need to.
Thanks for your advice!
The pic is of the cow and calf we had Saturday; a Club King calf!
