western iowa,by Denison | LKM - 1/3/2019 10:50
I’m interested to see how the cattle handle through the gates set up on a diagonal like they will be in this barn. In my other barns, with gates on the ends, the cattle don’t always come out as well as I think they should. Even with the gate wide open, they tend to swirl before stepping out.
On my Barns with bunks on both sides, I mostly don’t even use both bunk lines at receiving, largely that’s because the pens ar often only half full. In that situation we have up to 4’ of bunk per calf. I have observed calves be confused the first couple weeks by the bunks on both sides because it forces them to to separate into “cliques” at feeding time. I prefer them all walking together as a herd, in the same direction at feeding time. Herd building behavior I think?? Hell I don’t know
Now though, when we are running more full on the double bunk barns moving forward with cattle that know how to eat I think the additional bunk space will be nice we have got along better with L shaped bunk barns--usually bunk on south and bunk on east wall-they eliminate the timid ones as they know they can sneek in on the short L and that is where the water is on the east end so that timid calf will source water a little sooner-+ the hydrant is right next to that end to add a water tank the first 20 days--that's nice thing about building your own-you get to tweek every building as you go |