Equipment/Facilities.......Can't Live without?

[Stihlpro]

I am not a large producer like many of you but an looking to make life a little easier.  I currently run between 15-20 mamma cows, I AI everything and have a cleanup bull.  Any calves not sold go to my Dad's to either be fed out or are used as replacements.  I have a barn primarily used to store hay and has feed bunks to feed during the winter.  I also have a small corral with a headgate.  My issue comes when I need to "roundup" cattle for AI, castration, shots, hauling etc.  I have gotten to a point (since most of this is done solo) where I am tired of "chasing" everything.  Everytime I do one of these activites it takes a couple of hours to set up all the panels, get all the cows with in the panels, keep them there, etc.  There has got to be a more efficient way to do this.  I am looking for some suggestions on Equipment/Facilities you have and can't live without? 

 

[Will]

I am a small producer too.  We have about 50 cows.  I built a small stout catch pen next to my corral and put in concrete bunks.  I feed my cows maybe once a week this time of year just to keep them coming in and used to the pen.  I also keep my creep feeder in the pen so the calves are used to coming into the corral.  Very little cost whenyou only feed 50 cows a 100# of feed a week but makes life really easy.  Just go out honk and shake the bucket and they all run in the pen.

 

[BCCC]

We have what we call a portable chute(not so portable down the highway but from where we need it go it works. It's essentially everything you need to work cattle. It has supports that fold out from the side so you can line it with 3 panels and they won't be moving everywhere.  It leads into a small tub(you can fit 12 cows in it at a time, but flows perfectly if there's only 8 or so. that tub flows into a single alley way(that used to be our "portable chute" we used to have a manual chute mounted on it but now have set up so we just set a hydraulic chute in front of it. There is about an 8ft "alley way" for you to stand in between the two alleyways. Hard to explain, but there isn't anyway we could live without. Before this year we would work close to 13,000 head in the homemade setup. Did I mention when you have a whole entire pasture of chronic calves on wheat pasture, you can haul it out there, set up panels and work them all?

 

[farmboy]

you need one of these. We run about 20 cows and this is the right size and person can work them pretty easy in a setup like this. I think we have around 2000 in it. We cut all the locust posts our selves and built it all in about 2 months. could have had it done in a week or two if we weren't lazy  ;D Any Questions?

 

[jbzdad]

more fences... I think you need to break up your pasture with some cross fences and be able to catch your cows without moving panels... it is a real hassle to need to rodeo everytime you need to sort, doctor haul etc... squeeze chutes and fancy corrals are nice, especially if inside, but you have to be able to get ol' Bossie in the damn pen and then in the trailer

 

[LostFarmer]

I have a small facility as well.  I use the bait method.  All my cows will come running for a grain bucket.  At weaning the calves are grained a little all the time.  My water is in the catch pen as well as the grain troughs.  LF

 

[GoWyo]

Saddle horse and a trap accessible from every pasture.  An alley and head catch and portable panels work for AI season.  Cows get gathered once or twice a day, depending on who needs bred.  After the first couple of gathers, when they see a rider on a horse, they head for the trap.  Bait works too, but that is better in the winter when they're hungry.

 

[GONEWEST]

http://www.onemancorrals.com/

This is pretty good

 

[shortyjock89]

We have one like Zach's, only a bit smaller, and it has a gravel floor and a sweep gate to make things a bit easier.  We have it at the corner of a cow barn, and we can feed the cows, shut them in, and open two gates and work 6-10 through at a time and turn them right back out  into the pasture when we're done.  I'll get some pics real soon if I can find a camera. It only took my dad and I two days to build, excluding the corner posts which are set in concrete.

 

[braunvieh]

If you have a way to funnel the cattle from a large area gradually to a small area, this makes things much easier, especially when working cattle alone. We also have a catch with an alley that moves the cattle to another pasture, or you can catch them in the corral. The cows go into this really well and flow right thru as they think they are getting moved to the other pasture (and are at times). Also, like several others have said, get your cows to want to come to you or at least your lead cows. If they don't run from you but look for you, it makes things much easier.

 

[forbes family farms]

Crowding tubs work or the Open Bar Corral Tub works easily. I have attached a link so you get more information.
http://www.for-most.com/corraltubs.html
http://www.for-most.com/crowdingtubs.html

 

[lightnin4]

A little off topic but this reminded me of something.  When I worked for a vet we once worked a herd of cows (around 50) in a corral made mostly of round bales.  The client called and asked if wwe could bring a chute and a couple of panels and he would have everything else ready.  I've never seen anything like it!  He had a large corral made from round bales and funnelled them into a "round bale alleyway".  He had a couple of panels at the funnel to push the cows into the alley but that was it.  We put our two panels in the end of the alley and attached them to our squeeze chute.  It worked surprisingly well! (lol)  I just wish we had a camera!

 

[kanshow]

One of the first things that comes to mind is our wilson wheel corral. 

 

[drl]

www.grandin.com

The designs are great on here and in her book she has some layouts for smaller producers for 25 cows and such. I would highly recommend her designs book. Her designs might be more than what you are looking for but pieces of them would help tremendously.

 

[BadgerFan]

heavy duty anything is good, but it's more important to "think like a cow".  Use the water trough as the bait for the catch pen- the cows will be there at least once every day and usually all together.  Make the sort pen off of that.  It can be tough with existing barns but cow flow is the most important thing.  I built our catch pen 32 ft wide (one wire cattle panel and one 16ft gate wide) and it's about perfect.  It's not too wide that cows can get around you but wide enough that they feel comfortable.

I wish ours had a roof over it, but not yet.  This year I put CIDRs in while it was raing, pulled CIDRs while it was raining, bred several while it was raining...

 

[Jill]

http://www.wwmanufacturing.com/express.html
One of the best investments we ever made, you can move it anywhere, feed in it a couple of days and the cows come right to it.