Maternity Pen

I've been seeing these nifty calving pens that can dub as a crowding gate to get a cow into the head catch and also a place to mother up. Intrigued by such a set up and wanting to get something like that at Jack's place, we went to the drawing board. 

New, a portable unit is around $5K. I found a homemade outfit on auction, but went out of my league. So I thought of getting just a head catch and building the rest, but even used those aren't cheap. Wanting to get something set before winter really shows up, we just kept kicking until the job was done. 

I got to thinking that our the head catch on our squeeze chute back home probably was just bolted on. After calling Dad, he confirmed that to be the case.

Jack already had a nice little shedded horse pen next to some light duty corrals that I figured we could make work.

So we pulled the trigger and took the head catch off the chute back home.

Then found some old gates around the corrals to work with.

And sized it up. There was a lot of potential here. But, with time being scarce, we really wanted to plan our work before we started cutting and welding.

Once we were there, though, we got to work.

Once the gates were modified and the head catch ready, we hauled it all out to the ranch. 

After cleaning out the 14'x14' stall, we were ready for action. 

Thankfully Jack had a skid-steer sitting around with an auger available to dig our holes.

Once done, we dropped in the head catch mounting posts.

After being leveled up, we set it in stone.

Then let it set up for a couple days. This was the point we had been wanting to get to. Shortly after this, the north wind blew and winter started to set in. No more digging holes now. We still have some fine tuning to do, but construction is basically complete. 

Here the set up, which will hopefully work to doctor White Cow's lump jaw as well. Get the cows in the bigger corral net work. All the fences are low, but this back alley/pen can be raised up with some panels sitting around. Run the cow you want back into here, past the closed gate of the new pen.

Then open the gate of the new pen, which will close off this alley completely after we put a panel across this opening. Once you turn the cow around to come back, she'll have no choice but to duck into the new pen.

Then grab the gate and start to crowd her, (we'll have to fill in the back 3' of this stall so it fits tight against the new set up).

What's cool about this whole deal, is that you can just keep crowding her until she has no choice but to try and get out through the head catch.

Bingo. Once she sticks her head in the self-latching head catch, we should be able to finish crowding the gate tight and chain it to the end post that we concreted in. At least that's how it's supposed to work!

Giddy up. 

When we used to calve-out in Montana and had a cow in trouble, life got a little western trying to convince her to stick her head in an open-sided head catch. I really look forward to trying this crowding set up. Work smarter, not harder! 

March calving is quite a ways down the road. But once the frost is set in the ground, who knows when it is going to leave. We wanted to get this done before the ground froze, then we weren't scrambling once spring rolls around. Also, we now have a set up if we need to doctor a cow in the meantime. Ranching is fun, unless you're unprepared. Not us. We ranch ready!