With a new month upon us it also means new tasks on the farm yard. Ensuring your facilities are up to scratch for the jobs that lie ahead for the coming month is very important. Investing in the correct equipment is essential in maximizing efficiency and ensuring safety on your farm.

The majority of cows will have calved at this stage of the year and farmers will start to focus on AI for the coming weeks. The safest option for holding a cow during the AI process is in a crush.

We have a number of products that can help to make this process safer for both operator and animal. Our semi-automatic head gate which is produced here in house is width adaptable and heavy duty. This gate allows for the safe stalling of the animal whilst the animal is worked on.

Our anti-backing gates help to prevent the animal backing down the crush. We have both telescopic and fixed anti-baking gates and anti-baking gates with wheels and without.

We would also recommend a pedestrian gate behind the first panel of the crush to allow easy and safe access to the animal once stalled.

With the growing number of ‘outside farms’, check out our portable crush. Again we manufacture our own portable crush in house. It can be transported via 3 point linkage or via pallet forks. We also have hurdles and archways that can be added onto to the portable crush to create a race which will encourage the animal to move in the direction of the head gate.

With the weather starting to clear up slightly farmers will be beginning to think about leaving calves out on pasture in the coming weeks. The best method to monitor the young calf’s growth is by weighing. By taking the weight of the animal before they hit grass and monitoring at regular intervals will have considerable benefits. Edging away from the one measurement fits all method, you can calculate individual feed and treatment requirements.

Regularly weighing your stock has many obvious benefits but with the correct system you can use it as a tool to:

  • Ensure livestock are sold at optimum weight grade
  • Minimise treatment waste
  • Monitor reproductive performance
  • Identify sick or lame animals early
  • Manage your time spent in the yard

 

Leaving cattle back out to pasture has its own health concerns. It is important to ensure minerals are available to the animal while out on grass. The danger with having mineral lick buckets out on a pasture is disease.

O’ Donovan Engineering has introduced a product that will put your mind to ease when it comes to badgers spreading TB. This new mineral lick bucket stand lifts the lick off the ground by 500mm and out of badgers reach. This will prevent badgers urine or faeces contaminating the lick and spreading the disease.

Not only does it prevent the lick from badgers it also prevents the cows themselves from kicking over the bucket and dirtying or wasting the lick. We have been testing this product on our research farm for over a year now and we are very happy with the results.

 

So make it a priority to inspect your facilities this month and ensure you are ready for the new tasks that lie ahead. For more information on our Tru-Test weighing Range and to see our wide variety of crush equipment see our website https://www.odonovaneng.ie/ or call our sales team on 021-7334066 today!