2 row cubicle shed length

[Grassman247]

What bedding products? Auto scraper running pretty frequently?

Sawdust, yes can run all day if needs be

 

[Grassman247]

Scrape both ways and a channel in the middle?

Difficult to get in the shed with bedding machine then

 

[organicguy]

Surely your cheapest, simplest, least maintenance, would be simply to set the auto scraper to run frequently enough to ensure you have no wave.
Could it be set to scrape the half of the passage nearest the pit first, then the farthest end to reduce how much you have to move?
http://www.rvwpugh.co.uk/news-article.html?id=82
Your tanker would not need to be as big as this!

 

[Tarw Coch]

Sawdust, yes can run all day if needs be

I have a 240ft run, 10ft between the cubicles with auto scrapers running at 2hr intervals. No real issues although if starting again I’d have a wider passage and a Chanel in the middle although at the time 10ft was an improvement on the older shed at 8ft and the length came about when the shed was extended so a central Chanel would have involved a lot of digging up concrete.
As I say, no real issues as is and hardly any digi seen with cows going through fottbath twice a day.

 

[Grassman247]

I have a 240ft run, 10ft between the cubicles with auto scrapers running at 2hr intervals. No real issues although if starting again I’d have a wider passage and a Chanel in the middle although at the time 10ft was an improvement on the older shed at 8ft and the length came about when the shed was extended so a central Chanel would have involved a lot of digging up concrete.
As I say, no real issues as is and hardly any digi seen with cows going through fottbath twice a day.

Scraper passages will be 14ft, think we will go with a channel halfway and then run a channel under the concrete to remove the slurry to the bottom of the shed

 

[Serup]

Reviving this thread.

Hoping to start work on some new buildings and a parlour this year, we would like to have 2 sheds, one each side of the collecting yard housing 150 cows each, we are having an open channel at the bottom for the scrapers to dump into but obviously the sheds will be 100 metres long to fit 150 cubicles in each shed. Idea is we can feed on the outside of each and not have to open any gates to feed the cows or drive through any muck.

Question is how do we deal with the bow wave of slurry?

Slats halfway up the shed? How does this slurry get to the bottom channel? Twin wall pipe?

Or do we go for slats up the middle of the scraper passages?

Scraper passages will be 4.5metres wide

All ideas welcome!

My shed is 112 meters long. Feed passage in the middel and two rows of cubicles on each side. 304 cubicles in total. The cows exit in one side to the parallel building with the parlour. I have a “bridge” on the feed passage, so the cows from the far side can get to milking without walking where we feed.
I have concrete floors in my scraper alleys with a small canal lenghtwise in the middel of the alley. It’s about 40x40 cm. I have a push-pull rope scraper system with a canal at one end. That canal have an over 10% slope to the small tank in the middel where my mixer and pump is. I have the whole building made with a 1% slope to that end. I scrape 8 times a day and that doesn’t make a huge wave. The small canal take a lot of it. I wouldn’t spend money on canals halfway or a lot of slats. I use sand as bedding. I don’t remember if i put detailed pictures of this in the thread i made about the build in the pictures forum.

 

[dinderleat]

Scraper passages will be 14ft, think we will go with a channel halfway and then run a channel under the concrete to remove the slurry to the bottom of the shed

If your running a channel why not just put slats on it, probably won’t be a lot of cost difference.

 

[dinderleat]

Personally I would go Chanel and slats the whole length with a Auto v type scraper, Which would eliminate any bow wave Of which you don’t want no matter how big or often the scrapers go and reduce muck in the passages overall. Or you could get one of those big hydraulic scrapers that would open to 15ft and just wip up and down.

 

[farmboy]

My shed is 112 meters long. Feed passage in the middel and two rows of cubicles on each side. 304 cubicles in total. The cows exit in one side to the parallel building with the parlour. I have a “bridge” on the feed passage, so the cows from the far side can get to milking without walking where we feed.
I have concrete floors in my scraper alleys with a small canal lenghtwise in the middel of the alley. It’s about 40x40 cm. I have a push-pull rope scraper system with a canal at one end. That canal have an over 10% slope to the small tank in the middel where my mixer and pump is. I have the whole building made with a 1% slope to that end. I scrape 8 times a day and that doesn’t make a huge wave. The small canal take a lot of it. I wouldn’t spend money on canals halfway or a lot of slats. I use sand as bedding. I don’t remember if i put detailed pictures of this in the thread i made about the build in the pictures forum.

Let’s see some pictures of the cow bridge

 

[Serup]

 

[PREES]

@Serup - Very interesting - the rope runs in the "canal" below the floor level? What if the rope breaks? Is it difficult to get the ends together to repair it? Also if the canal that runs the length of the building is 40 cm x 40 cm how wide is the narrow slit above the rope (& I assume the scraper runs in)? Is it really wide enough for slurry to fall through and does that help prevent a wave from building up?

 

[Serup]

@Serup - Very interesting - the rope runs in the "canal" below the floor level? What if the rope breaks? Is it difficult to get the ends together to repair it? Also if the canal that runs the length of the building is 40 cm x 40 cm how wide is the narrow slit above the rope (& I assume the scraper runs in)? Is it really wide enough for slurry to fall through and does that help prevent a wave from building up?

We have 50 cm of chain on the scraper, so we can just lift it through the slit to change the rope. We can do it whereever the scraper is parked without working under floor level. The slit is about 4 cm wide. I would estimate that 80% of the slurry run in the canal. The legs on the cows show how good it works, and i think they are clean. I will se if i can take a short video when it’s scraping later.

 

[PREES]

@Serup - thanks a video would be great, I'm surprised that so much slurry goes through the slit into the canal/channel!

 

[Bullet9]

Scraper passages will be 14ft, think we will go with a channel halfway and then run a channel under the concrete to remove the slurry to the bottom of the shed

I've 3 sheds at 110m long, 2 have been extended over the years, one shed build last year. Older shed was extended by 50m so I've got middle drop off then bottom channels had Hydraulic scrapers at start but wave was too big and scrapers where too slow. Took them out went rope, new shed had middle slurry channel only with ropes it works well.. I've had 2 ropes scraper systems and found one works better than the other Every 2 hours scraping had to alter one to every hour. I'm great one keep it simple. Did change sawdust and found steel grids are by far better than concrete ones waste of money.

 

[Grassman247]

I've 3 sheds at 110m long, 2 have been extended over the years, one shed build last year. Older shed was extended by 50m so I've got middle drop off then bottom channels had Hydraulic scrapers at start but wave was too big and scrapers where too slow. Took them out went rope, new shed had middle slurry channel only with ropes it works well.. I've had 2 ropes scraper systems and found one works better than the other Every 2 hours scraping had to alter one to every hour. I'm great one keep it simple. Did change sawdust and found steel grids are by far better than concrete ones waste of money.

Just pricing this idea up, think this is probably the ultimate in cow cleanliness

 

[Tarw Coch]

View attachment 875232

Just pricing this idea up, think this is probably the ultimate in cow cleanliness

Totally irrelevant but I wouldn’t want whoever designed and built that shed working for me, the door is out of line with the passage.

 

[frederick]

This channel design hasnt got long with us and you might even start to struggle with planning now going forwards.

With the new clean air strategy we have to reduce ammonia. Mainly caused by the mixing of urine and sh!t.

Passageways will need designing to encourage the urine to run away and just scrape the sh!t and not mix the 2.

 

[vantage]

This channel design hasnt got long with us and you might even start to struggle with planning now going forwards.

With the new clean air strategy we have to reduce ammonia. Mainly caused by the mixing of urine and sh!t.

Passageways will need designing to encourage the urine to run away and just scrape the sh!t and not mix the 2.

That’ll be easy to do, not! All we need to do is attach two pipes to the rear end of the cow, filling two separate containers, easy!

 

[Tarw Coch]

This channel design hasnt got long with us and you might even start to struggle with planning now going forwards.

With the new clean air strategy we have to reduce ammonia. Mainly caused by the mixing of urine and sh!t.

Passageways will need designing to encourage the urine to run away and just scrape the sh!t and not mix the 2.

Surely at a practical level that will be all but impossible to achieve and any money spent on such an idea will be wasted..........and i very much doubt any solutions will be cheap

 

[PREES]

The Dutch have already developed (and are using) a type of mat which allows the urine through and keeps the muck on top. They have buildings with no cubicles at all just loose housed on the "high welfare" floor and a robot scraper which continuously picks up the solid muck. No bedding at all just the filter mattress!