Zig-zag rump rail - h/b parlour

onesiedale

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Derbyshire
What size /dimensions have people got for the centres on zig-zag rump rail in the parlour?
I'm thinking specifically of smaller Jersey cross and Jersey cows. 750mm centres seem to be the norm but should I be looking as little as 660mm.
What are people's thoughts and advice for a new h/b parlour going in ready for next season?
What are the biggest issues with rump rails?
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
What size /dimensions have people got for the centres on zig-zag rump rail in the parlour?
I'm thinking specifically of smaller Jersey cross and Jersey cows. 750mm centres seem to be the norm but should I be looking as little as 660mm.
What are people's thoughts and advice for a new h/b parlour going in ready for next season?
What are the biggest issues with rump rails?
I'd go with the spacing to fit your smaller cows, unless you have a plan to increase their size in the future. Have been there and got the shirt, it's doubly painful if they don't fit well- end up with an extra couple per row and it's all :banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead: and extra work. Put a couple of smaller first calvers in and it just makes a simple operation difficult IMO, they jam right forward and you risk your teeth getting in there :inpain:
How many clusters/bails are we talking?
If its 12 it won't matter they way it does on 36 or 40 :)
It also largely depends how much you can adjust the breast rail, an extra 6 inches there can make a very big improvement without having a specialist "Jersey-only" parlour.. I read into your post that it's your operation so future-proofing may be of less concern than getting it right first up?
As a contrast, here, you could set it up for one sharemilkers' herd and then in two seasons the new sharemilker has whacking big cows that can't fit in :LOL:
If that isn't the issue, then I'd scale your dimensions based around the dimension of your average sized cow and allow adjustment either way from there.
Have once worked with a small "packer" that kept the front cow a foot away from the gate, very simple solution to too many double-ups, it just hung on the rump rail and was made of a car tyre cut and folded in half :eek: welcome to bodge county :cool:
 
Jersey and jersey X cows can still be quite wide even if they're a bit short so just make sure you can pull the breast rail in. My parlour is on 760 centres and is fine for pure jerseys but we do pull the front rail right out in spring when we are calving heifers and then slowly push it back out through the year. I know a chap who put in a Waikato parlour designed for jerseys, I think it was on 700 centres , now he milks mongrels and it's a real squeeze.
 
Location
Cheshire
Just have a straight rump rail and an adjustable indexed breast rail. It will suit large, small and mixed herds then. Cranked rump rails don't accommodate variation as well.
 

Blue.

Member
Livestock Farmer
Jersey and jersey X cows can still be quite wide even if they're a bit short so just make sure you can pull the breast rail in. My parlour is on 760 centres and is fine for pure jerseys but we do pull the front rail right out in spring when we are calving heifers and then slowly push it back out through the year. I know a chap who put in a Waikato parlour designed for jerseys, I think it was on 700 centres , now he milks mongrels and it's a real squeeze.

Local jersey herd spaced the breast rail back so if they went back to Holstein it was just a matter of moving the spacers out.

When tb testing heifers I just moved the rail back and it worked fine.
 

jimmer

Member
Location
East Devon
as said above , our jerseys are as wide in the guts as a holstein especially when 5-7 months in calf
we have a hinged breast rail that makes milking a whole side of smaller cows much easier , i have often said i would like to put it on a ram so it can be adjusted easilly during milking to keep the little buggers back
 

In the pit

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Pembrokeshire
Jersey and jersey X cows can still be quite wide even if they're a bit short so just make sure you can pull the breast rail in. My parlour is on 760 centres and is fine for pure jerseys but we do pull the front rail right out in spring when we are calving heifers and then slowly push it back out through the year. I know a chap who put in a Waikato parlour designed for jerseys, I think it was on 700 centres , now he milks mongrels and it's a real squeeze.

Same here,,I have just pulled neck rail back in 3inch to give them more room , doesn't take much
 

PREES

Member
Location
SW Wales
HELP!
We have a straight rump rail and we are finding that the cows are not positioning themselves correctly and over 20 animals it becomes a problem.We feed in the parlour with individual troughs and separators. The front cows are a bit loose and the back end so tight the entry gate isn't closing properly. As a result it takes longer to milk and could be contributing to cows mucking in the parlour (see other thread). We need to get them to go around and forward a little more, tighten them up and improve access to the udder with less space to move/fidget. SO we are looking for some second hand rump rail that we can try out before going the whole way and changing the layout of the rump rails gate controls etc. Does anyone have a single rump rail for at least 10 spacings at 760 centres that they would like to sell/donate?
 

Big_D

Member
Location
S W Scotland
You have my sympathies as no fun milking in parlour where cows don't fit properly. We had a 14/14 westfalia installed about 15 years ago, local agent went bust while they were fitting it. Cows didn't fit worth a dam, dealer was long gone and westfalia themselves didn't want to know. Main mistake they made was making the standings only 1.75m wide, no idea why as supposed to be a 50 degree parlour so should have been 2m standings, was 1.75 in westfalia drawings. Anyway the first thing you want to do is measure width of standings as this determines what angle you can get them at, if too narrow you can either make an overhang into pit and pull them round or move gates and possibly mangers to get angle to suit width
 

PREES

Member
Location
SW Wales
@jimmer - we are block calving, we think we need to turn the cows around a little more and push them up towards the feeders - as I said to tighten them up a little. DI'd wonder whether we could pivot the rump rail so we could move it forward and up or back and down until we got it right, try it on the first 10 units and see what happens, nothing lost if it doesn't work we can put the straight rails back in!
 

Dead Rabbits

Member
Location
'Merica
IMG_0054.JPG

Do you see the one indexing bar sticking out about half way back? It is bolted on not welded. Maybe try something similar and adjust as needed until you find what works. Then cut and weld


That is Plan B! Which is best? I thought it might be easier to try out a length of zig zag rail to see if it works?
 

jimmer

Member
Location
East Devon
@jimmer - we are block calving, we think we need to turn the cows around a little more and push them up towards the feeders - as I said to tighten them up a little. DI'd wonder whether we could pivot the rump rail so we could move it forward and up or back and down until we got it right, try it on the first 10 units and see what happens, nothing lost if it doesn't work we can put the straight rails back in!
Autumn or spring ?
If autumn is it just gutty cows taking more space
I only have 8 a side , but it is noticeable that the back 3 are tighter than the front cows , I have feeders and straight rump bar , not currently feeding so hoping when I do they will stand correctly, at present my issue is they stand with their heads under the feeders which pushes them back a bit
 

PREES

Member
Location
SW Wales
@jimmer - Autumn calving. Inevitably the space requirements vary over the year but looking at other herds they seem to get better alignment than we do so we think we have to look at changing the ru rail but we would prefer to try it out on 1/4 of the parlour first. If it seems to move them around a little it should work on the rest?
 

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