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Saturday, October 3, 2009

Stanchions....

Three or four years ago, I designed and built my own stanchion to use with milking the goats. It's nothing SPECTACULAR but it's a really good design - if I do say so myself.

I've had complements from all over the web and even sold a few plans of it. Strong, simple, and gets the goat off the ground so I don't have to bend over so far.

After all that, now I need to re-do my milk room for a dairy COW. It would be nice if the cow's neck would fit into the goat stanchion, but that ain't gonna happen.

Luckily, a friend gave us part of an old stanchion that came out of her grandparents barn (Thanks, Janene!). This put me a day or two ahead of the game - I wouldn't need to cut up and build my own.

Even MORE lucky - it's a "two holer".....

I decided that I'd probably need to move my current milk stand over to a different "barn" in case I would ever use it there. It's been a good, handy device to have, but it will probably sit idle for awhile now.

What I am going to do is - use one of the stanchion's spaces for the cow, and the other for the goats.

Simple enough?

WEEEELLLL......Not so fast.

Since our milk cow is a Jersey, I still need to get her off of the floor a bit, so I don't have to lean over. This is what I came up with:

Platform

I'm nearly done with a "platform" for her to stand on. It will raise her up about 9" when I'm done. That should get "things" high enough off the floor to work nicely.

As for the "goat side" I will need to re-do the head stall then build another raised platform to get the goats up a little higher.

It SHOULD be pretty interesting looking when I get done.

For now, Sally decided that she'd run through an open gate, and hurry into the milk room in hopes of being fed.

I obliged her - but she had to work for it.....

She put her head in the stanchion but it wasn't a real good fit:

Smarty Pants

Then she saw the camera, and had to put on a show like I was trying to choke her to death:

HEEEELP! HE'S CHOKING ME!!!!

Finally she decided to behave so I could give her some grain.

What Do I Do NOW?

But not before she blew a raspberry at me for my troubles!

PHHTTTT!


Sometimes - goats can be so melodramatic......

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