How big a slatted shed for 150 suckler cows?
- Thread starter marco
- Start date
- Location
- Orkney Islands
FFS no
marco
Member
- Location
- tipperary, ireland
Thats the kind of system i'm trying to get away from, cubicles that are scraped into a dungstead.
Hilly
Member
- Location
- Scottish Borders.
Anyone got any pics of a slatted shed specially for cows ?
- Location
- Bedfordshire
Has anyone seen an Orkney floor, with a hole in the back wall so the shite works out to the outside, rather than being in the shed.
Hilly
Member
- Location
- Scottish Borders.
No hole, but i would have thought with a gap ie a pannel raised 6" up the poop would go underneath ok ? ive seen straw bedded beasts dirtier.
- Location
- Orkney Islands
Would at a push put up with a sloping floor for young stock but not for cows year in year out rough on feet and legs and if a cow happens to calf on it the calf will be covered in sh!t from head to feet (as will you before it can be got out) as in trying to get on its feet it ends up in the sh!t at bottom of slope, I know we had one for too many years.
I'm sure some of our Orkney members can furnish you with that. Generally they would be a 10' or 12' x 15' pen with a straw creep behind for the calfs to lye in.
Our slats was designed for younger cattle & has no creep so when the cows calf I have one slatted pen that is bedded for the calfs with creep gates on each side for calves to access. It does mean running a few pens of cows together though but works ok
- Location
- Orkney Islands
Hilly
Member
- Location
- Scottish Borders.
Very posh ! are they suckler cows ?
Hilly
Member
- Location
- Scottish Borders.
Do you calve them on the slatts now ?
- Location
- Bedfordshire
That's what I thought, if it was building a feeding passage then I'd lift the panel as you say, then the inside could just be scraped by hand what's left.
Hilly
Member
- Location
- Scottish Borders.
My handling pens are on a bit of a slope, and all the poop mysteriously ends up at the bottom and the top is always fairly clean !
Hilly
Member
- Location
- Scottish Borders.
Are Orkney floors legal now ?
- Location
- Orkney Islands
Photos were taken when byre went up in end of eighties when Hereford Friesians were the in thing
- Location
- Orkney Islands
No we built another shed with slats on one side and bedded court divided up into calving pens on other side
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Hilly
Member
- Location
- Scottish Borders.
How many cows dose it hold ? looks long, how deep underneath and dose it hold a full winters worth of poop ?
- Location
- Orkney Islands
I posted about this shed early on in this thread, its 160 feet of slats and a 20 feet bedded area on each end both sides which we use as calf creeps the whole shed is 200 feet and can hold 144 cows plus anther 28 if the bedded area is used but with no bedding IYSWIM the cows get cut down to 130 when they have all calved as we use a bit of the slats in the middle of the shed for a calf creep.If I were building the shed again I would up the roof pitch to 22.5 deg,
The tanks are 9 feet deep but no suspended passage which was a mistake as no it doesnt hold the whole years slurry but then we have the cows in for a very long winter up here
The tanks are 9 feet deep but no suspended passage which was a mistake as no it doesnt hold the whole years slurry but then we have the cows in for a very long winter up here
Hilly
Member
- Location
- Scottish Borders.
How much more space underneath do you think you would need to hold a full winters worth of poop ?
- Location
- Orkney Islands
Well either suspended passage which would be 33% more storage or if the tanks had been 11 feet deep.
We got a grant on the byre with the calving pens and part of the criteria to source the grant was to fit aeriation system in both byres now to make this work well it needs about 2.5 feet of water in tank at start of winter so this reduces the amount of slurry capacity but makes the slurry available for spreading at a moments notice.
I haven't worked out costs but would imagine deeper tanks would be the cheaper option.
We got a grant on the byre with the calving pens and part of the criteria to source the grant was to fit aeriation system in both byres now to make this work well it needs about 2.5 feet of water in tank at start of winter so this reduces the amount of slurry capacity but makes the slurry available for spreading at a moments notice.
I haven't worked out costs but would imagine deeper tanks would be the cheaper option.