[shep53]

The best system for you using  no or very little straw and not needing a race or crate and minimal equipment ??    A traditional BYRE  with  a modern twist ( rubber mats   and neck collars )

[Marches Farmer]

Our new livestock market has some long, thin water troughs that you can empty by turning them over, which seems a good idea, providing you've got somewhere sensible for the mucky water to run to.

[pointer]

Thanks farmerswife, do you mean you use hurdles at right angles to the wall as cubicle partitions? - so lugs fitted to the wall and then pined in place? How far apart do they go for this, and would hurdles not be a bit long, ie take up more space than is necessary? I'm not calling into question what you're doing as you've been at it much longer than me; just checking I haven't missed anything. I'm assuming 10-ft hurdles.
I agree with your point about permanent fixtures - I anticipate the building will have stock in for 5 months or so, so I'll want to be able to clear it completely for the rest of the time.
shep53, thanks for your thoughts. How exactly did the traditional byre work? I understod cow was chained facing wall - is that still legal? Would it then be fed individually by hay rack on the wall, or what? Is it posts in sleeves you use yourself, or just hurdles?
This is all very useful for me, and hopefully also for other "lurkers", which I usually am myself! 

[shep53]

Put in DAIRY COW COMFORT TIE-STALL DIMENSIONS  byres are still big in America / Canada /Europe just went out of favour in the uk as it is labour intensive   .  Had cows ( dairy and beef ) heifers and bulls all tied at home and milked cows in byres until the late 70's .      Metal posts drop into the sleeves and the posts have gate pins welded to them so you can hang gates either side

[SallyintNorth]

I'd be very wary indeed of constructing cubicles using hurdles or gates.  The cubicle metalwork you can buy has been developed to minimise the risk of a beast getting caught / stuck - and even then, we all have to pull a cow back a bit by tractor every now and again!  I'd expect broken legs using hurdles.

[SallyintNorth]

I'm not sure whether tie-by-neck stalls are now outlawed but there is certainly a plan to do so. 

Old farmers such as BH can argue a good case for them being high welfare  - no bullying is the big one - but they are generally frowned upon these days.  There is in any case a legal requirement to free the animals twice a day for exercise, and I suspect it's not the easiest job to get them all willingly tied up again afterwards

[Buttermilk]

When using the byre system we never had a problem getting them back for tying up, what did cause trouble was if one went into the wrong stall, it caused chaos.  Cattle love routine.

[shep53]

The code of welfare as of march 2016 states that  cattle in a cow shed  need to be let out once per day for exercise  ,  they are very happy to be tied up as  Buttermilk says  they love routine and no competition  for food and space .    They are very clean ,  they have no foot problems , you can individually feed , AI is easy , TB testing easy  any vet treatment easy .  The demise of the byre was totally  a labour thing , 40 cows in a byre was enough for one man   but the same man could do 100 in cubicles .           All methods have drawbacks      Straw Yards work well if you can get cheap straw and better still with a straw chopper  , bullying can be a problem and some times a teat can get damaged  .   Cubicles have to be the right size , the odd animal gets stuck  , the odd animal goes in backward ,  the odd animal refuses to use the cubicle and lies in the passage ,   cattle can have foot problems  (  slurry heal  / inter digital dermatitis )       The code of welfare states that passages should be cleaned twice a day  ( dairy herds do  but not worked with beef cattle that do )                                                      Modern self lockers do not clang as they have noise reduction systems                                                                  POINTER do you have space to store a lorry load of straw under cover ??

[Marches Farmer]

We left the old cow byre in our stone barn when we converted it to a holiday cottage.  It's in a corner, with a low wall about a metre high and long a metre from the wall.  There's a 60 cm  "scoop" of concrete te full width of it that the cow faced, for feed and water, with cobbles in front of that.  A long metal bar sits vertically on the wall, with a chain circle running through it for the cow's neck. A fairly typical desing until quite recently, I believe - There are a couple in the barn acros the lane from us.