Livestock Ideas From A Hutterite Colony

Livestock Ideas From A Hutterite Colony LIVESTOCK Miscellaneous 22-4-13 When a Hutterite colony near Lethbridge, Alberta, put up several new dairy barns recently, they installed an innovative gutter system on the buildings that's designed to keep rain water away from pens around the buildings. An extensive series of pipes and downspouts carry all the rainwater to one place so it can be channeled away. Joel Waldner, a member of the colony, recently sent FARM SHOW several photos of the setup. Both the drain pipes and the eave troughs are screwed to the walls of the buildings. A series of 1-in. wide, 8-in. long tin plates were first screwed to the metal walls. The tin plates are then wrapped around the drain pipes and screwed together. "We first set up this drainage system on a 300-ft. long open-sided shelter that's divided into six 50-ft. pens. Each pen houses a different group of cattle. Pens are divided by a 4-ft. high concrete wall, with 8-ft. tall wind break planking on top of the wall. The gutter system helps keep our 250 to 300 heifers, steers, and milk cows dry. We have set up the same gutter system on our three hog barns." The colony uses highway guard rails and oil field drill stem pipe to to make inexpensive cattle pens, crowding gates, and loading chutes. "It makes a strong, durable fence that'll never wear out and is maintenance free," he says. They also used steel cable and 3-in. dia. drill stem pipe to make fences. The pipes are anchored in cement about 2 ft. underground and spaced 10 ft. apart. They weld U-shaped steel brackets about 1 ft. apart onto the pipes to feed the cable through, from one end of the fence to the other. Each fence has four cables. A turnbuckle at the end of each cable can be used to tighten the cables if they ever get too loose. "These fences are very sturdy and will never go down," says Waldner. Feed bunks along the outside of their steer pens also are built using cable and drill stem pipe. Two cables mount above a 1-ft. high concrete wall at the edge of a 20-ft. wide concrete lane. Feed is dumped on the lane and pushed in against the wall by a skid steer loader. "The cables keep animals from wasting feed and are much less expensive than commercial head locks," says Waldner. "If any feed gets spoiled we just use a loader to push the spoiled feed to one end of the bunk. It eliminates the need to shovel feed out of a trough or use a scraper." The colony's calf barn is equipped with collapsible pens formed by hinged gates that can be swung out of the way, allowing a skid steer loader to be used to clean out manure. The entire pen area uses a series of 5-ft. long hinged gates that form two rows of pens. The gates lock together at the partition between the two rows of pens. To clean out manure the gates unlock and swing 90 degrees out of the way, leaving the pen completely open. The hinge is formed by a steel rod on one end of the gate that fits into a length of round tubing on another gate along the building's wall or along a walk-way at the center of the building. "The gates were made by making a frame out of sq. tubing 5 ft. long and 3 ft. high," says Waldner. "Then we bought sheet webbing in 4 by 8-ft. sheets, cut it to the size of the gate frame, and welded it on." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Joel Waldner, 67 Tudor Crescent, Lethbridge, Alberta _ Canada T1K 5C7

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