It would have to be a heck of a stand to take the weight of a cow!
Our old hand, Jersey Hillie, needs nothing more than her leather collar tied (with a bit of baler twine, of course
) to a gate or hurdle. Something to stop her swivelling too far sideways helps, but in general, having her alongside a gate and her milkmaid (or milkman) squatting on her other side is all we need.
We hand milk into a bucket, so we are sitting one side of her anyway.
This year we are training her daughter, Red Devon cross Flare. Because I’ve had a problem in the past with a heifer that didn’t take to the tethered collar setup, we trained Flare with a pen and a bum strap. While training at first, we did this with a very robust setup, using scaffolding poles bolted to the ground and walls, so there was no possibility of her harming herself or us. Now that she’s used to the regime, we can milk her anywhere in a ‘U’ shape made by a fence and a gate at right angles, with a hurdle for the third side. Because she’s still young, we do strap it all down pretty firmly still, but when she’s older I expect it won’t need to be so robust. The bum strap is a chain threaded through a bit of alkathene pipe, fixed to the sides of the pen using carabiners. She walks in for her jug of grass pellets, you click the strap behind her, and she’ll stay there happily, chewing the cud when she’s finished her pellets, until you unclip the strap. The pen needs to be narrow enough she can’t turn around, and you need to be able to reach her udder from the side, of course.
Topic: Milking stand vs no stand (Read 3021 times)
