Small Farm Planning: Setting up simple working pen for the cattle chute

hey there folks this is josh stoney ridge farmer welcome back to another beautiful day here on the stoney ridge farm this video brought to you in part by tartar farm and ranch thank you tarter farm and ranch for helping us out with a great deal on this squeeze shoot system we're going to show you guys how all this works and we're going to set up our temporary corral pin system so that we can bring our cows through our handling system it's going to be super awesome this will be part one part two will probably be either tomorrow or next weekend where we run our cows over here we're going to put our ear tags in we're going to band our calves and get our steers ready for production for beef so you can buy beef right off our farm awesome so come along as we put up our temporary corral system foreign [Music] so we have the option with the starter farm and ranch system and with any cattle handling system you have the option most likely of a sheeted system meaning it has metal sidewalls versus an unsheated system which would be open the sheeted system is a much easier system for the cows to work through they don't have those outside distractions and inherently the cow's head is going to kind of be down as he figures out his way or she figures out her way through the handling system right here so that's why we went with the sheeted sweep system it's easier on handling the cows now you'll notice the cows when we run them through in the next video their heads will be up and their eyeballs will be looking around like gazing around at what's going on but as we start working them through we're gonna work them through gently it's all about handling our cattle in a low stress environment in a gentle way this is the way the sweep system is designed so there's a door right here this is a big gated door and right in here we got a handle pull that handle back this handle has a catch on it so we're going to open it all the way up and our corral panels that we're getting ready to put up are going to be temporary corral panels so we'll have a corral panel on the back side of this so we can access this area behind us and we'll be able to hop over and shut the sweep system door right here eventually we'll build a permanent cattle handling setup right here but for now we're just doing temporary corral panels so the way the sheet system works the cow will enter in through the sweep right here and we'll bring this closed on them so we get to this point lock that back the gate will not push back so no matter how much the cows want to push back the gate's not going to push back so you've got six or seven cows in this area right now they're all in there and as you slowly close down the chute sweep system just like this as you close that down it forces the cow into a smaller and smaller area cows like to turn cows want to go this way if you ever approach a cow it's never going to walk right up and be like hey dude it's going to do this it's going to do this it's going to look this way so it's always turning cows are always turning when you approach a couch typically never gonna gallop gallop gallop away it's gonna be turning so that's why the sweep system is so handy the sweep system will bring the cows down to a smaller and smaller area until it gets into the chute so you're at a point right here where the cows can still turn around a little bit and they're going to be turning around in here but as you get a little tighter get tighter and tighter and maybe a cow's head might be in here but all you got to do is kind of reach in and just kind of scare them in you don't need to be in here going yeah you don't need to be making all that noise man you need to be in here calmly handling the cows not talking junk to them and not cussing them out because they don't like being cussed out cool this opens right back up [Music] so this is the end of the sweep system and the start of the alleyway system the alleyway will slowly begin to collapse down onto the cow what makes a cow comfortable not turning around in the alleyway makes a cow comfortable and this is going to kind of rub the sides of the cow's belly right here and that is a comforting feeling to the cow that's why we have a squeeze system versus just some old shoot to run them through like they did in the old days so we've learned a lot about cows and the psychology of bovine animals so coming through here they'll squeeze down tighter and tighter so this area right here is about three feet wide i think it's 36 inches between here and then we'll go to the next shoot which is adjustable this is the adjustable portion of the squeeze shoot if you lift up on these handles right here raise up adjust the full squeeze so in other words it will go down just like that okay the way we're gonna do this is we're gonna put it on notch number three for our cows to slowly narrow down into this alleyway right here and the cow will bump both sides of its belly right here on the inside of the alleyway it's really really cool from there we're gonna go right into the squeeze shoot system i hope you guys are liking this please pound that like button subscribe the channel i'd love to have you back this is just great information i've learned this information it's super cool that i can pass it on to you so the way this is constructed again this is the adjustment on this side we can squeeze it in even tighter if we want to as tight as we want in case we have some really young calves we've got to bring through i think the number three notch is gonna handle all the cows that we have right now entrance to our squeeze chute right here so there are handles numerous handles back here that we're gonna pull this one opens up the entryway door okay there's an entryway door there you'll see it move just a little bit so that opens and closes our chute okay there's a notch right here so cow comes in comes through close that down i want to be as gentle as we can we don't want a whole lot of beating and banging because that freaks a cow out a low stress handling situation is what makes a cow happy okay so we have all sorts of little ways to palpate our cows we can go in through here and do a preg check all these open up so if we've got to band our cow or we got to do a preg check we can go in through the palpation area right here and we can prank check and or band a steer this is called a squeeze chute because it squeezes the cow this is the squeeze handle right here cow comes in it's wide open i reach right here and i pull down see that it squeezes in on the cow squeezing its belly and making it comfortable the cow's head will be out the head gate right over here and this is where we'll be putting ear tags in and checking the cow's head if the cow wear have pink eye or something like that and you need to put a medicative treatment on that's where you do that right there so we disengage a handle right here and open this guy up and that's how we let the cow out the cow will come out and either go into a trailer right here or back out into the pasture away from the other cow so we've got all the cows pinned up and we slowly run every one of them through we've got 29 cows and calves and steers and bulls here on the farm this is how it closes it's also spring loaded so it closes just like that a little bit of water in there so that's how the whole squeeze chute works with the exception of one more thing there's a rope right here so if we don't want to release a cow say we're loading them into a trailer and this cow that's in the squeeze chute we don't want in the trailer we want that cow back into the pasture we will squeeze this handle right here and the side will open up and out goes the cow right back into the pasture so you got two options you can load up right here or you can release them back into the pasture right there the way we're going to set this up is where we can load them up and or release from the front and or the side then you just pull this and that latches it all back into place that's how this system works that's what we're going to be working with our cows with now we're going to grab big t our tym tractor the 1104 we're gonna pick up a huge bunch of uh temporary cattle panels and we're gonna set these up right here for our cows to have a place to stay before they go through the chute and the way we'll get our cows in is we'll put a little bit of grain a little bit of sweet feed in a feed bin and they'll come right in shut the gate behind them and we'll be able to handle them brad [Music] it's cold in that tractor that's why it's bad dude let's get these unbundled now let's talk a little bit about this fencing right here so when i first started building fencing here on the farm i went ahead and bought up a ton of materials and man i'm super glad that i did that so i've got enough wire and pipe to basically finish the entire farm fencing and gates so i went on and bought all my gates all my pipe all my wire will slowly be constructing fencing around about another 55 acres here on the farm so man pat myself on the back i had no idea prices were going to go up like they were but they they really have now let's talk about the cattle panels that we have right here these are a little different cattle panel than you might have seen cows will get their heads up underneath these so we got the extra bar right here is a heavy duty bar so that the cows won't get their head up underneath this like a bull and flip it up now a cow will and can get its head stuck in right here so we've really got to think about that and you really really need to watch your cattle if you're putting them in a cattle panel like this and consider putting a t-post right here so that the cow can't get its head in there either a t-post or even just a simple step in post will help keep a cows from head from getting in there and this whole bundle is upside down you can see it's been sitting for quite some time it's got some grass and even trees growing up in it [Music] yeah foreign all right guys super super simple man so all i did was basically make one big square pin right here and we won't need to sort any animals out this year and if we do need to sort any animals out we can add a big square pin on to right here this will serve as my gate opening once i get the cows in there i'll pull this section back to here and all the cows will be contained then we'll run them right through the squeeze chute system the sweep system man super super happy these cattle panels are an easy way to handle this i'm gonna do a little head scratching to see if there's a way if i need to separate a cow i can separate it we've got five more panels which is pretty much not enough to do anything with other than maybe expand this just a little bit cannot wait to run the cows through the system show you guys how this tartar farm and ranch sweep system works it's going to be awesome thanks a lot guys please found that like button jump in subscribe the channel i'd love to have you back here on the stoney ridge with