Field Milkhouse
That's our field milk house.
For a while in the spring I was walking the does up and down from the backfield to the barn for milkings. It was a pain, and invited disaster. It was a time consuming, we had to go by plants the goats liked but we didn't want them to eat and there was opportunity for mishap at every turn. There is a better way.
So I brought the milking stanchion up to the backfield and put it under a tarp covered stock panel arch. It gave me a place to hang the scale, store milking supplies and keep everything dry.
To improve on that, I built the field milk house. It's a hemlock deck (locally sawn, hemlocks the best choice available from my rough sawn guy). It has uprights for attaching the arch and is built on skids so I can pick up the whole thing on my loader forks, carry it to a new location and set it down. The skids also keep the rest of it out of the dirt so it will last longer.
It is certainly nice bringing the house to the animals instead of the other way around. Much faster and more productive. And it gives me a dry place to store nik nacs in the field. I moved it this afternoon for the first time. As advertised, slid under it with the forks, lift and carry.
Labels: Cattle panel structure, goat, Goat Shelter, Milk, Stock panel
posted by MMP at
8:12 PM
3 Comments:
Very nifty! I'm glad you got forks with your tractor. We have found them to be pretty handy. It is interesting to see what is essential for milking. I always thought that you needed a solid structure (ie a barn). But it makes sense that what you really want is to be out of the elements. I'm curious, how big is the floor of this "field milkhouse"? At first I thought you had used a palette, but I'm guessing that it is a bit bigger then that.
Warmly,
Holly
By
Holly, at 4:24 AM
One more question. How long do your tarps last? We have had blue ones that ended up in shreds because they deteriorated in the sun. We have a couple of silver ones now to see if they hold up any better.
Holly
By
Holly, at 4:36 AM
The floor of the milk house is 4 X 8. That's because a single Stock panel arch covers 4 x 8 and I can pretty easily pickup something 4 feet deep and eight feet wide with the tractor. That setup also makes the top of the arch about 8 feet high. It might be a trick getting that through my tractor gate openings, as they have a cross bar at a little more than eight. But I am pretty sure I can.
That floor plan and hight is just enough to get my existing milk stanchion into, have a little room in front for a wheel barrow of hay and enough space for me to work beside the goat. My plan is to build in a dedicated stanchion that can fold out of the way when I want to use the milkhouse for something else.
On the tarps, I bought 6 mill tarps from E Marine Trailer parts. My notes say it was $91 with shipping for a case of tarps, $7-$8 a tarp (12 by 20) and they are lasting less than a year in constant sunshine. If I do that again, I will do heavier tarps, 10 - 12 mill and I do find the silver tarps last longer than the blue tarps. Plastic tarps are the weak point of the cattle panel structures. I have some ideas about using corigated poly carbonate greenhouse panels instead. But they are not less expensive in the long run, they are less flexible and they are a steep initial investment. I have decided on that and am looking at other alternatives.
By
MMP, at 11:58 AM
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