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NWIN | im thinking about building a new heifer barn next spring and im looking for some input, ideas or pictures. what im thinking now is 20' pens with bedding in the back with a scrape alley in the front then head locks and feed alley under roof with a long overhand on the out side to feed heifers from the pasture. |
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Pine City, MN | I'd go sand freestalls on hfrs over 300-400 lbs.. Much less bedding cost and way less labor and cleaner hfrs... We got sand for our breeding age hfrs and wish all the younger group were also... bedding pack is a real pain compared to sand freestalls
You see the ugly hoof on 1773 that's because she was on bedding pack for 9 months before moving in to the sand group...
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SW WI | This may be a stupid question and I don't mean to highjack this thread, but what do you think about running hostein steers in a freestall barn built for a dairy? Just wondering what the drawbacks would be. The talk about labor savings on bedding got me thinking. I don't think building new would cash flow with all the equipment in a freestall, but there are some older unused barns around me. Once again depemds on what someone would want for rent. My main focus is animal health, use, and how it would be to work with steers in that type of barn. Thanks |
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| ? from a beef guy with no dairy experience, how do you train those cows and heifers to sit in those freestalls? My luck they would all want to lay down on the cool wet concrete and get covered in manure. |
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Pine City, MN | If you have a nice dry stall they almost always use it... With the hfrs after 2 days in the pen they all use them.. With the fresh hfrs maybe 1 in 100 will lay in the alley.. Then we tie them in the stall for 4 hours.. Most times just have to do it once..
Steer in freestalls biggest problem is they piss in the middle of the stall. Tough to keep
dry.. |
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Chilliwack BC | Most heifers are in freestalls from the time they are weaned off milk and learn early. Thankfully training them is never much of an issue. I have heard beef people express the same concern as your before though. |
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Manitoba | nice setup for the heifers, question I have is regarding the scrape alleys, how are you handling the liquid manure from the scrape alleys? Would like to build off site for my heifers, similar idea to what you have set up but setting up a seperate system for liquid manure handling is going to add a lot to the cost. How are managing that? or are you tied into the milking barn system?
Martin |
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Pine City, MN | We have 4 little mini manure storages for all our barns.. We haul every other day.. With sand a lagoon just isn't a great deal, either is ours, but its cheap and works. Here is a couple pics I found..
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Manitoba | Thanks for the reply and the pics, we are not able to haul in winter anymore but the small pit idea and pics have given me some more ideas to ponder. Thanks again. |
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Thompsontown, Pennsylvania | i was amazed when heading to indianapolis for nat. ffa convention a couple years ago stopped and toured big dairy in northwest indianna ( twin oakes or fair oaks idk) and thats all they had at the barns were those mini storages....uses big vaccum tanks to pump them out and transport to a big satellite lagoon somewhere i guess......not the worst idea i've seen |
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new heifer barn ideas
