RADIO TRANSCRIPT
Date: May 19, 2020 Agent: Damon Pollard
This is Damon Pollard, Livestock agent with the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service - Burke County Center. Today’s topic is Cattle Working Facilities.To properly manage a cattle operation, adequate handling facilities are a must. Having a fast, efficient means of safely working cattle benefits both the animals and the producer. The better a producer’s working facilities are, the more they will be used. The more they are used, the better their management becomes.
The essential needs of a good facility include holding pens, crowding or sorting pens, a working chute, loading chute and a head gate or squeeze chute. The deluxe version may include scales, a palpation cage, and a calf tilt table.
Squeeze chutes or head gates provide the means of restraint of individual animals for management procedures, affording operator and animal safety.
Every cattle producer should at least have a chute with a head gate for both safety and routine management.
It is generally better to release animals from the squeeze or head gate into a smaller pen. By releasing animals into an enclosed pen, worked cattle can be released together or moved back to a holding pen, and any animals that escape without being worked won’t have to chased all over the pasture to be reworked.
By investing some time and thought into a new working facility this spring, producers can avoid many headaches for years to come.
This is Damon Pollard, Livestock Agent with the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service - Burke County Center. If you would like more information, call us at 764-9480.
