Cattle crush built to deal with any problem
Buy new kit — and you don’t get problems. Readers are invited to send me their comments! Livestock farmers have a more complicated life. New machinery won’t stop their cattle, sheep or pigs going wrong and falling ill, and new young ones can be as prone to problems as older ones.
Cattle will always fall ill, generally at the wrong time of day, when there is nobody about, and fixing them requires a certain amount of equipment.
For many, this means the heavy investment in a complex and sophisticated cattle crush.
These are built to deal with any problem, and have gadgets to lift legs both front and rear so their feet can be trimmed and doctored, other devices to secure them so their bellies can be clipped, weighing scales, and other add-ons which make a machine for all circumstances.
But the modern crush is less useful when you have a cow which is unable to calve, and so needs to have a Caesarian.
Non-farmer readers may be surprised to learn that vets do Caesarians on a near regular basis.
They need the cow secured, standing if possible, with complete freedom to work on the left hand side. If the cow, through stress and sedation, drops to the ground, her head must drop easily to a lying position, and the vet needs to be able to continue working on the left hand side. The cow needs to be calm, as does the farmer, who is the chief nurse and theatre assistant.
When I visited the Jones family in Gloucestershire to look at their new cow housing, I paid particular attention to the crush they had installed in the cubicle building. Most of the time, I see cattle crushes either fitted to the end of a raceway, or portable ones that are moved around on the tractor three-point limkage, flexible in that they can be positioned anywhere with a help of some gates and baler twine.
Gerald Jones wanted a crush which was instantly available for vet inspections, injecting and dosing, and also doing Caesarian calvings.
A couple of Caesarians in the previous year showed him that part of the difficulty was getting the cow in the right place for the vet to operate. The ordinary crush was useless because the vet couldn’t get to the side, and a crush at the end of a raceway meant getting the cow separated from the herd, causing greater stress on both patient and physician.
He decided on a crush which is in the cubicle building, fixed to the floor so there is no way it can be borrowed or used out in the field and not returned, and which means that any ailing cow need walk the minimum of steps from her cubicle to her treatment.
The result is a home-designed crush which has strong sides that open outwards, so the vet can get where he wants.
Being in the cubicles, the cow can see her mates and isn’t isolated.
The front yoke has a slam action, with release and re-set handles at the top, which make it easy to get the cow loaded single-handed, and the yoke bars themselves are straight rather than curved, so if the cow goes down, she doesn’t get damaged.
Lastly, the machine has uprights that go into sockets in the floor, so the crush can be lifted clear, if that part of the building is needed for another job. The crush is now in use, and they routinely use it to treat and inspect batches of cows, keeping them in a holding pen with a short lead into the crush itself — and he has had a Caesarian, which worked very well. The vet appreciated the space and control he had on the cow, and the clean concrete and straw provided the cow with plenty of grip.
The cost of steel and fabrication is not too damaging to the farm budget. It’s another home-designed piece of farm equipment which is simple and effective. The cost is more than re-paid by one satisfactory Caesarian. While the Joness have fitted it in a new building, there’s no reason why something similar can’t be added to an existing cubicle building.
I would recommend the idea to every cattle farmer because it will reduce losses.
