Manual yard design preferred for remote Raetihi
The ease of use of Stronghold’s stock yards has been a game changer for John Taylor and son Isaac who built them on their hard hill-country property in November 2021. Words Sarah Perriam-Lampp.
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH STRONGHOLD
Designing a new set of yards is always a dream for farmers working with livestock, but for that dreaded fear to get it right.
In the remote area in the ‘Paraparas’ on State Highway 4 between Whanganui and Raetihi, the Taylors chose to install a Stronghold 220-head system where they are farming 1,100ha of steep, hard hill country.
Farm Manager Riley Corney had the luxury of starting with the Taylors with a new set of cattle yards that double as sheep yards for their 5,000 ewes plus hoggets and 500 cows he works with throughout the year.
“We winter on the harder hill country and calf on our easier country – which to many is not that easy – let’s say medium to hard hill country,” says Riley. “So we don’t handle the cows very often. They can be a bit flighty so it’s important to us that we have safe yards to work in.”
The farm policy is to sell all 200 weaners at once for the ease of bringing in the cows and calves off the hill to sell store. Once the cows have settled down overnight, they get them back through the yards to pregnancy test and TB test them before heading back out onto the hill.
The Stronghold yards have built in ‘safe zones’ for worker safety designed with the WorkSafe New Zealand guidelines to help prevent injury to handlers and stock.
The safe zone is described as an area 1.8m wide, which is railed off from the stock and runs from the force pen, along the length of your race to just before your drafting gates. In the safe zone Stronghold has a 1m-wide catwalk, made from FRP (fibre-reinforced plastic) which is a non-slip grated product so it doesn’t hold water or rot away. With the catwalk being 1m wide, two people can work the race and have enough room to walk around each other safely.
The cows off the hill can be a bit flighty so it’s important to us that we have safe yards to work in. – Riley Corney, Farm Manager, Manawatū-Whanganui.
“We want all our customers to be safe when working in their yards, as most accidents happen when you are in confined spaces with animals, so by having a multi-gate force pen and safe work zone you eliminate the risk by not having to be in with the stock in small pens,” explains Gavin Clothier, Sales Manager, Stronghold.
The Stronghold force pen has a 6.2m radius and a 3m backing gate, it comes standard with two entry gates or you can add on a third, which means you can load stock from multiple pens. Once the force pen is loaded (it can hold up to 18 head of stock) the handler returns to the ‘safe zone’ behind the backing gate.
“You don’t feel like you are forcing or pushing animals as it’s designed in a way that the cattle flow,” explains Riley. “The mechanical gates mean you can move the cattle through quietly and be completely out of the way. Even when you’re using the crush you are opening and closing away from the front with the cable, meaning it’s easy for me to run them through myself.”
In winter Riley will get the cows into copper bullet and provide a long-acting selenium drench using the cattle crush.
“I’ve used other crushes before and I like the ergonomic design of the squeeze, particularly with smaller cattle.”
While they do use electronic Gallagher weigh scales, the Taylors’ yard and crush system doesn’t have any electronic or hydraulics features for the practicality of a remote area that does not require off-farm servicing.
“Our yards have good flow to reduce anxiety and tension in the stock, with designs that will suit the lifestyle farmer to the large station farmer,” explains Gavin. “We offer a 10-year warranty on our galvanising and manufacturing.”
Riley enjoys not standing in mud and having the concrete base to the yards which is easy to hose down and keep clean. He says the wide anti-slip catwalk systems are great for not losing your footing when you are moving cattle up the race.
They still load out of their old yards right beside their Stronghold yards which have their loading ramp. They now also use the Stronghold yards for handling sheep due to the seven-rail design.
“It’s faster to run the lambs through the new cattle yards when we have the stock agent here to draft them onto the truck,” says Riley. “We like to take a sample weight of the lambs rather than a truck weigh. They don’t seem to slip under or through the rails which is great.”
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