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Friday, July 19, 2013

Building Our Dexter Milking Stanchion, Part II

The previous post follows part of the construction, and this post will show the finished result.  I'll do a final post with the plans.

Here's the finished milking stanchion.  The neck-catcher boards are open here, and you can see, at the top of each one, the little boards Herb hinged there to "latch" them into place.
The right-hand "latch" is in place while the left-hand one is still open.  You can just see the hinges--unused door hinges we had laying around.
Both "latches" are closed here.  You can see that if Siobhan's head had gone between the neck-catcher boards, the latches would keep the neck-catchers in place so she couldn't pull her head back out.

Just below the latches, note the angled boards that Herb nailed on to reinforce the structure of the stanchion.
He added two more angled boards up top.
This angled board reinforces the cross piece (with a purple mark) above where the cow enters the stanchion.  I wanted this board high enough so that I could walk under it without having to duck my head.

Finally there's a nailer board that attaches the corner upright to the ceiling joists.

Take my word for it, this stanchion would hold a buffalo (if you could get it in there!)

I'm not sure why you'd want to, though . . .

4 comments:

  1. Thank you for the materials list and plans. They made this project so much easier. We added a roof and a swing away head gate so the cow can walk straight out after milking. Works great! Thanks again!

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    1. You're welcome! It sounds like you made some great improvements! I wish we had room for our cows to walk out front ways!

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  2. I am so glad I found your page your stanchion is awesome we used your supply list and build one very similar. We had to have a side load stand because of limited space so we used a chain on one side to latch the cow in place. And also we added extra boards near the head catch to keep her from sticking her head in the wrong whole! We completed ours last night and hope to try it out today and prepare our cow for freshening! We used the exact parts list you provided but we added two hinges for the head catch latches, and the 2 i bolts and chain, total cost was $155 for all treated materials! Thank you so much! I do have photos of my stand if you'd like to see horselovers@accesshsd.net

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    1. Thank you, Rebecca! I'm so glad to know the plans helped! I'd love to see a photo of your cow in the stanchion and would be glad to share it!

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