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Post by JoshuaGA on Jan 22, 2012 21:33:56 GMT -5
Just curious, last group I raised I raised on an old open front hog floor, I suppose what most up north call a Cargill floor, two groups of calves, one on each side, IIRC I was bottling 15-16 per side. The way my plans are at the moment, I will be having to figure out a new way to handle calves. Got a couple or three ideas on doing it, seen pictures and videos of several different barns as well. Just curious to how some of yall do it, see if I cant get a few ideas from some of the dairymen on here.
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Post by cornandbeef on Jan 22, 2012 23:38:23 GMT -5
Mine are plywood. 32 inches wide. By 4 feet. I'm in an old barn. Have big coffee pots on times for hot water. Fronts are 2x4 . Three for rails. Thinking about building some fronts out of square tubing and slipping a poly board between. Then making a front gate I can open. What I'm thinking of building is on youtube. Squish's brother raises a bunch. I know he was using some plastic totes. Hopefully he will chime in sometime about it.
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Post by pldairy on Jan 23, 2012 11:24:45 GMT -5
we start them out in huches,we can move them around
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Post by Sofakingwhat on Jan 23, 2012 12:28:00 GMT -5
until decent hutches became available CHEAP on auctions, ours were 4x8 foot made of plywood and 2x4's. In a couple hours dad, grandpa, brother and I could knock out ten easy building from scratch. Throw a little of what I always called calf hutch wire fence out front, toss in a couple canary grass bales and get a calf in there. NEVER used bottle holders, until the poly domes that had them built in. If you have to hold the bottle for the calf you have no excuses to miss it's condition, how well it's doing, etc. Weaning under ideal conditions was in the hutch as well, so they did not get used to sucking the shit out of each other. THen into pens. Easy way to move them was two of us and a calf in a hutch. The drive through electric fences didn't shock us that way. At the very end of cattle on the farm, we had built a chute out of an old 3pt stack mover (gotta think creative when you're cheap) with a homemade skid loader QT on it. WOrked great for fats, and moving 6 calves at once..... that is once you got 6 calves to hold still long enough to get the contrary bastards into the chute at once. Once in pens, there was headlockers on feeders in the old heifer barn, the best ones were home made, and a home made head locker mounted to 8x8 posts sunk 6 feet into the ground in every pen. Generally use a swinging gate to corral them.
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Post by cornandbeef on Jan 23, 2012 18:51:28 GMT -5
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