Calving Season Made Easier
In this blog, we are looking at calving and the season ahead and what you can do to make it easier this year. We hope this information can help you with your preparation and planning for that busy time of year.
Calving can be a stressful period but also dangerous but simple improvements to dairy and beef farms can make their setups much safer and can minimize risk to the operator and the animal. When building or designing a calving layout there are so many aspects to consider. It needs to be dry and easy to handle cattle with adequate feed and drinking space. a simple disinfection station and along with all of this it needs to be labor efficient and designed in a way that all these elements work together. Whether it is investing in a calving gate and setup or creating dedicated washing facilities with access to hot water, there are changes to suit all systems and budgets to make your life easier. In the videos below we will go through several different setups and options for calving dairy and beef cattle.
Vincent Dorney (O’Donovan team member) talking through a calving and cubicle setup with Grasstec’s Bertie Troy.
Large cubicle shed with calving setup and dedicated cubicle space for near-calving cows.
This beef calving setup was done with the aid of the GLAS scheme. An annual grants scheme for the conservation and repair of traditional farm buildings and related structures for farmers in the Green Low-Carbon Agri-Environment Scheme. The Heritage Council, in partnership with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, manages the GLAS traditional farm buildings grant scheme. The principal objective of this scheme is to ensure that traditional farm buildings and other related structures that contribute to the character of the landscape and are of significant heritage value, are conserved for active agricultural use. Here we have a new calving shed in this build from 1847 that we helped to fully restore. The building was originally built as a milking parlour but has been used as a storage shed in recent years.
In this shed, we installed our new 1200-high 3-in-1 calving gate with cesarean gate. It is also kitted with LAC55 drinkers and head-locking barriers and one set of ultra-safe head-locking stalls for bulls. The ultra-safe stall has a unique adjustable neck width so is suitable for all cow and bull types. The stall will adjust to the animal’s head size. (For anyone asking how he cleans it out, he has a small Weidemann loader which flys in and out)
A new beef calving shed in this build from 1847 with head locking barriers
Our calving gate options
Our new standard 1200 high 3-in-1 calving gate with cesarean gate was designed with the farmer in mind. It comes with a Spring-loaded neck pipe for width adjustment or quick release. The new 2-in-1 design allows for a split gate system for c-sections in the worst-case scenario you may need it. We generally fit the calving gate as a dividing gate between two pens as it can be operated from both sides. Our standard sizes are 10ft and 12ft in both, custom lengths we can also make to order. Demo video below.
3-in-1 calving gate with cesarean gate
We also manufacture a fixed calving stall. It can come with weld-on hanged or wraparound hangers and a range of pole and wall mounting options. It also comes with most of the same features as our calving gates with a Spring-loaded neck pipe for width adjustment or quick release. we can manufacture and 2in1 gate to go with it or you can just use a standard gate to guide cows in.
Fixed calving stall
Here we have a large calving shed with 4 calving pens, a group straw bed, and a separate feeding area on slats that cows can be locked into when cleaning out and rebedding. Each calving pen is fitted with a LAC55 drinker and there is access through a door in the wall to the calf house which also has a hot water station and the farmer’s equipment on hand for calving.
Large Calving Shed
This is probably one of the most labor-efficient setups we have been involved in that I can remember. Here the parlour, calf, and calving shed are all under one roof along with a handling and drafting area just outside the parlour wall. He has all his calving and calf needs under one roof and parlour on hand for milking off a recently calving calf if needed. Hot water and medical supplies cabinet in the dairy and a very short run to the calf shed, calving season made easier
New calving and calf shed along with a new parlour all over one roof.
At O’Donovan Engineering, our motto is “quality and innovation give us the edge” – and this is the standard we hold ourselves to. We are proud of the fact we manufacture our products in Ireland and that we employ staff from our own community.
O Donovan Engineering is CE Certified to EN 1090 – Execution Class 2 and we working to ISO-9001-2015 standard. The quality and finish of your job are what matters to us and our staff, we have built our name through providing a great service. Be it designing custom-made products for your needs, solving problems that arise during construction, or just good solid advice from our experienced sales team.
We strive to provide uncompromising quality in everything we do. By placing the customer at the core of our business we deliver the perfect solution to suit your needs. For more information visit CALVING & CALF PRODUCTS or call 021-7334066. Thank you for reading our blog – Calving Season Made Easier.
