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 . . .