Calving pen size

Hilti

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Argyll
Got a shed that I want to adapt to calving / mothering pens .
14 x 36 byre - do l go for 3 pens @ 12 x 14 or 4 pens @ 9 x 14 ?

Cheers
Hilti
 

Hilti

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Argyll
Cows aren’t huge - average be about 600kg lim x
Got a cow n calf in just now , looks to be enough - 10 x 14 probably would be better
 

Whitepeak

Member
Livestock Farmer
I’d go as wide as you can, we’ve got some 10’x20’ pens (10’ bedded 10’ scraped) and when cows stand across them you haven’t much room behind her if you need to intervene. Even the smaller cows need the extra space, especially for the occasional one where we need the calving bar, usually end up opening the gate into the next pen to give ourselves more room.
 

Hilti

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Argyll
Let the cows calve in their existing environment. It save unsettling them.

Try to make a corner of the individual mothering-up pen into a sanctuary for the calf. Calves seem to be genetically programmed to seek a safe place to lie.

Cows on slats . Have a lot more to spring calves this year than normal so needing more space / pens
 

Jonny B88

Member
Location
ballykelly. NI
Do u find 10x10 is big enough?? Im thinking of making some same size out of cattle hurdles along feed barriers but worried if its big enough so that the cows wont lie on the calf

We had two years calving with 10x10 hurdles before we built our new ones. Havent had an issue yet but that was a worry with them. They aren’t in the pen too long. A few days then moved to bigger creep.
 

Old Tip

Member
Location
Cumbria
Mine are 15’ by 17’ but think 12’ by 15’ would be ample to give the calf ample space to get out of the way so as not to get squished
 

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