Beef building - green field site

[Dave6170]

This is our new shed, been finished a year now. 120x40. 12 foot scrape passage is fine. Wouldnt want it any narrower. Was plenty room for the vet pding when they were locked in. I have basic water bowls back to back tucked in the stanchion at the feed barrier. I dont like water in beside the bedding.

 

[M-J-G]

This is our new shed, been finished a year now. 120x40. 12 foot scrape passage is fine. Wouldnt want it any narrower. Was plenty room for the vet pding when they were locked in. I have basic water bowls back to back tucked in the stanchion at the feed barrier. I dont like water in beside the bedding.View attachment 621066View attachment 621068

With the locking head yokes do you manage to feed as many young cattle as you could on a diagonal barrier.

 

[mo!]

We're using 10 5' spring barley a week for 80 600-700kg steers. They are getting cleaner but we don't clip for StM. ABP want them spotless so we put them in a well bedded pen for a week then clip.

To update this, StM are now wanting their cattle clean or a huge fine per animal.

 

[shearerlad]

This is our new shed, been finished a year now. 120x40. 12 foot scrape passage is fine. Wouldnt want it any narrower. Was plenty room for the vet pding when they were locked in. I have basic water bowls back to back tucked in the stanchion at the feed barrier. I dont like water in beside the bedding.View attachment 621066View attachment 621068

Serious shed envy!!

 

[Dave6170]

With the locking head yokes do you manage to feed as many young cattle as you could on a diagonal barrier.

No i think a normal diagonal barrier has 12 spaces in 20 foot. Lockers are only 10. The calves have silage on front of them all the time and i have a trough in the creep for extra space when they barley in the morning

 

[Pan mixer]

No i think a normal diagonal barrier has 12 spaces in 20 foot. Lockers are only 10. The calves have silage on front of them all the time and i have a trough in the creep for extra space when they barley in the morning

A diagonal barrier may have 12 spaces per bay but with cows you can't get 12 in anyway, so 10 is fine.

 

[M-J-G]

I thought that too, for cows, but I wondered if it was a compromise when it came to young stock. I guess if they are adlib it's not so much of an issue.

 

[Lovegoodstock]

To be fair most sheds with no sides are pretty good for ventilation, but that's not always an option, particularly on an exposed site.

The main thing that puts me off the Roundhouse is that it's only ever going to be a stock shed, which is fine if you have stock in it all year round or have a lot of other housing, but it's not the best when it comes to things like harvest time, straw storage or diversifying to anything else.

Is true, depends on your situation, have plenty of sheds, but then you end up with plenty of cattle, but I do have sheds that will take the silage/straw/fert etc so I wanted a good cattle shed for me and this ticked box. Was always amazed how rain and snow seems to drift through and not settle in RH, told everyone that for 6 years. Learnt my lesson 6 weeks ago when we got a real dumping of snow that just covered 3 pens for several days. Was where older cattle are that will sell shortly, saw anther thread how some selling filthy cattle as no straw and hey look bad, afraid to say I have these, 120 cattle to summer spotless, 40 to sell as stores soon, dry muck now but filthy. One thing I love is temp in shed fluctuates little more than 3 degrees including summer, though normally empty bar a few then which may alter things with less heat coming from cattle,whether designed for this or coincidental, but the central hole creating the drw makes a difference of airflow rather than just an open shed with air coming in. Temp is only been taken in central pen, so roughly cattle level, but seems cold or warm the bulk of weather gets taken over the top of cattle so temp doesn't change, wasn't really looking at taking figures but a vet was shocked how cool it was in summer and put a thermometer in to see

 

[M-J-G]

A guy local to here has one that I've been to see a couple of times, as a stock shed I cannot really fault it, not so handy for scraping out I suppose.

Without doubt, a great shed to handle cattle in, and would be very good for calving in I'd imagine.

 

[alan6430]

We have sheds which are 40ft wide and feed barriers at the front. 12ft scrape passage by the barrier, bedded area at the back.

We don’t have gates to separate the 2 areas and scraping out is a 2 man job.

Does anyone have any ideas how I could keep the cattle back while I scrape out by myself?

 

[Horn&corn]

We set up Elec wire once to keep cattle back when scraping but it just didn’t work properly and only took one spooked animal and the whole sheds mixed up. We have used L shaped panels concrete panels to separate but these are a faf and get caught when cleaning out. Easiest to get some posts put in over the summer and do it properly if this is going to be a problem for years to come

 

[mo!]

We just have a fence and gate across the middle of our 120×80. So push the cattle to one end, scrape out the empty end then swap. Handy if you want to draw some cattle out as well. The bit under the gate is tricky but you can get most of it.

 

[organicguy]

We have sheds which are 40ft wide and feed barriers at the front. 12ft scrape passage by the barrier, bedded area at the back.

We don’t have gates to separate the 2 areas and scraping out is a 2 man job.

Does anyone have any ideas how I could keep the cattle back while I scrape out by myself?

We have calf sheds up to 5 months old, 20ft wide bays, 30 ft deep, 10ft scrape passage, 14 calves each bay. Double gates on each front post on edge of bedding, calves can be shut onto bedding to scrape passage, into passage to muck out.
Works brilliantly but expensive on gates!
Will do something similar on beef shed based on 15ft bays, will scrape 12ft and use gates to shut back on to bedding. Would give 30ft per pen,14 cattle per group.

 

[onthehoof]

This is our new shed, been finished a year now. 120x40. 12 foot scrape passage is fine. Wouldnt want it any narrower. Was plenty room for the vet pding when they were locked in. I have basic water bowls back to back tucked in the stanchion at the feed barrier. I dont like water in beside the bedding.View attachment 621066View attachment 621068

I still can’t fathom out why people feed this way - to just put feed on concrete and allow animals to push it out of reach and then have to go round once or twice a day to push it up, to spend all that money on a shed surely a trough wouldn’t add much more. But there must be a reason as so many do it especially dairy, not a criticism, just intrigued to know why.

 

[Pan mixer]

I still can’t fathom out why people feed this way - to just put feed on concrete and allow animals to push it out of reach and then have to go round once or twice a day to push it up, to spend all that money on a shed surely a trough wouldn’t add much more. But there must be a reason as so many do it especially dairy, not a criticism, just intrigued to know why.

Exactly, that is why I put some panels along, they also cut out some of that low-level draught that is counter-productive to cattle comfort.

 

[Dave6170]

I still can’t fathom out why people feed this way - to just put feed on concrete and allow animals to push it out of reach and then have to go round once or twice a day to push it up, to spend all that money on a shed surely a trough wouldn’t add much more. But there must be a reason as so many do it especially dairy, not a criticism, just intrigued to know why.

Difficult to clean out a trough, more expense, difficult to stand in a trough when re tagging i suppose?? I push silage in once at night and its clean by morning.

 

[marco]

if you don't have troughs and have opening barriers you can open/clean out any pen you want.

 

[Poorbuthappy]

I still can’t fathom out why people feed this way - to just put feed on concrete and allow animals to push it out of reach and then have to go round once or twice a day to push it up, to spend all that money on a shed surely a trough wouldn’t add much more. But there must be a reason as so many do it especially dairy, not a criticism, just intrigued to know why.

Round bales

Edit - to elaborate I drop round bales along the barriers, nudge in with the loader what they can't reach next day, then push in any remaining with my boot the third day, allowing them to clear up before putting in next bales.

 

[aled1590]

How would you feed in a trough without a feeder wagon? I just have flat concrete and feed silage and maize out with sheargrab pushing it along

 

[Northeastfarmer]

To be fair most sheds with no sides are pretty good for ventilation

The main thing that puts me off the Roundhouse is that it's only ever going to be a stock shed, which is fine if you have stock in it all year round or have a lot of other housing, but it's not the best when it comes to things like harvest time, straw storage or diversifying to anything else.

Exactly my thoughts