FACILITIES & EQUIPMENT

Milking times are the most stressful points of a cow’s day. Removing as much stress as possible from the holding area and parlour can help improve milk let-down and ensure a complete milking.

If you’re thinking about making a few changes to your freestall bedding area, take an extra peek at some commonly overlooked areas to ensure you don’t miss something in the planning steps.

When building a new freestall barn, what seems like a small decision in the designing phase can make or break efficiency later on. On the other hand, a few simple tweaks can save time and stress after the barn is built.

Tunnel ventilation was originally introduced in the 1980s primarily as a solution to address bird mortality issues due to higher bird weights and densities in older, underventilated broiler chicken barns.

Since auto-wrap was introduced in the late 70s, the basic setup has not changed. Some of the parts have evolved, but serve the same function as prior designs. The auto-wrap tying system is a totally mechanical operation, so all actions are started and completed by machine-driven parts.

At one end of the scale there’s the gargantuan service truck. It has more neat stuff on board than most people have in their shop.