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Russellville, KY | Don't feel like you have to jump straight to a TMR, but I would strongly encourage you to get j-bunks or some variation of it where you stay out from amidst the cattle. We have been beaten, knocked, kicked, and pushed while feeding cattle from buckets out in the pasture. It just is not worth the risk to be out there with them packing buckets of feed. When we switched to portable feed bunks (trailers), it eliminated being in the middle of the cows, but I still like the concrete method better.
Depending on your circumstances, I think some concrete and a roof are the best investment you can make if you have cattle. I have had a decent size herd of cattle for 11 years now and just this fall put in a concrete feed pad 15' x 240' with j-bunks. I aim on adding a roof as soon as I can afford it. My biggest regret was not doing it sooner. I aim on using the area to feed cows on all winter, then background calves on at weaning. I am working towards doing a compost bedded pack barn.
Go and see as many different operations and feeding setups as you possibly can before you commit to it though. I have toured over 20 confinement facilities over the past 24 months before I decided on the compost bedded pack design. I do not know exactly how it will work for me, but the theory behind it makes more sense for my location and long term goals than anything else I have seen.
Where we are on fragipan soils with only about 2.5 feet of usable soil, we average 50 inches of rainfall per year, usually less than 1 week where the ground is frozen solid per winter, and summers where humidity and temperatures are both high, I can't imagine doing it any other way. Believe me, we've tried almost every other way. | |
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Future in cattle industry
