Portable Milking Stanchion (pic)

This looks fantastic! I may just steal your design!

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it's me!

Holy buckets! That is so nice, you shoulda just built a barn to go around it, lol.

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Joan Crandell
Wild Iris Farm
"Fair"- the other 4 letter F word." This epiphany came after almost 10 days straight at our county fair.

Thanks for the compliment! There is nothing original about that design~ I borrowed aspects from Topside and from all over the internet. I would suggest if your going to move it much to perhaps go ahead and add some more angle support. I'm considering adding a couple smallish triangles at the front and back~ the way I built it all the stability is where the cow would pull backwards from inside it. When I moved it out of my driveway over to the yard it swayed side to side more than I liked to see. Thats why I'm going to have to have more people help me move it into it's eventual final position.

Good luck with yours and If you need more pics of mine from other angles let me know.

I really was working out a whole milking parlor in my mind but I have more ideas than money or physical ability right now. Maybe someday.

When I was a boy all the dairy farmers had long feed troughs with a whole row of stanchions along it. The cows were let into the barn, each went to its place, the farmer threw a lever at one end and a long wooden bar closed all the cows in at once. Only one bar of the stanchion moved, the other was fixed. All the parts were of 2 x 4 lumber.

If you will get your heifer used to being handled well before she freshens (start before she is even bred) all you have to do is lead her into a shed with a feed trough, put your milking stool down beside her and go to work. Some people let the calf have a little milk so that the cow lets down her milk, then wash the udder and take what they want. Others, with an old gentle cow, take what they want first or even dispose of the calf and take it all.

I always preferred to get my part last as the strippings were said to contain the most butterfat.