Ideal cubicle bed height?

[miniconnect]

What's the ideal dairy cow cubicle bed kerb height? Breaking out old cubicle be with 7 -8 inch height. Passage is on slats and is scraped twice a day, so would lowering it to say 4 or 5 inches bring any benefit? Putting in bendy cubicles with bed total length of approx 8ft 6, if it makes any difference...

What height is everyone else's?

 

[Sandpit Farm]

I don't think it matters as long as the beds stay clean. If the bed is comfy, a cow will literally climb into it. Most I have seen have been 9-10" and lots of folks have added a 4" angle iron on top to accommodate sand. The cows would climb in. 8'6" isn't too bad but ideally it would be 9' (i.e. 18' from heelstone to heelstone on a head to head).

 

[Derrick Hughes]

Used to say lower the better certaily not over 8 inches . Cows standing back would damage their back feet and joints

 

[Sandpit Farm]

Used to say lower the better certaily not over 8 inches . Cows standing back would damage their back feet and joints

They did used to say that. I guess the question would be ‘why are they perching in the first place?’. If the beds are comfy, they should lie down within a minute.

 

[miniconnect]

I don't think it matters as long as the beds stay clean. If the bed is comfy, a cow will literally climb into it. Most I have seen have been 9-10" and lots of folks have added a 4" angle iron on top to accommodate sand. The cows would climb in. 8'6" isn't too bad but ideally it would be 9' (i.e. 18' from heelstone to heelstone on a head to head).

Thinking we might try 6 inches, hoping less a step will be easier on older frail cows. We were seeing ones standing back, or hanging off cubicle beds, but hoping the longer beds will cure that.

 

[kill]

Height of cubicle kerb has to be higher if an existing passage way is narrow as the muck builds up far to quickly in a 6ft passage way compared to say a decent 12ft passage.
Yard scrappers may also be a deciding factor as a long passage may make a larger wave while scrapping so advisable to keep kerbs higher.
Personally I would keep kerb 6inchs minimum.

 

[Sandpit Farm]

Thinking we might try 6 inches, hoping less a step will be easier on older frail cows. We were seeing ones standing back, or hanging off cubicle beds, but hoping the longer beds will cure that.

Yes longer beds should help with that. 8'6" are better than most. Make sure you have good lunging space with nothing that can bang their chin in that space (i.e. above 4" off the ground). Then a 6' bed (heelstone to brisket board) with the neck rail 125cm (give or take depending on the cows) directly above it.

The bigger cows will flick slurry over their backs with their tails but it is hard to avoid that as the beds have to be set for the majority of cows... it is hard when you have just a few much larger cows.

 

[Col555]

Look around the wall bottoms and basically measure how high the sh!t splatters. Make your heelstone a tad higher than where most gets to! We dropped ours to 5’ from 10’ and now wish we’d left them alone. Our herd general run loose on a high concentrate diet, so it splatters well. But I’ve also seen a cow that maybe doesn’t pick it’s feet up as it walks, kick crap from the floor up onto the beds.