Finally got pictures taken and uploaded of the wonderful double stanchion that my sweet DH built for us. This is the one that tamed our wild and wooly Katie into the Perfect Milking Parlor Princess!!! The first time we locked her in here, she tried to pull her head out, but the horns were contained by the head lock. She tried to feel behind her, and her leg met the back board. That was it. No fight, no circus or anything! It was one of the sweeter moments of my life! She decided that she'd just ignore us and dive into her trough full of hay and goodies! She barely moves while we brush, pet, wash and milk her, even though I'm sure we did more than our fair share of bumbling around, esp. at first! Trust me, if we could do this...so can you! Go for it!!!
This is the front view, with the right hand stanchion completely open, and the left one closed. In case you are wondering why the swing bars look like they are two toned, it's cuz the boards that my DH used to make the head gate were pressure treated 2x6, cuz that's what we had on hand. I was concerned about having the cows (not to mention the kids and me) touching that pressure treated wood every day, so my DH lined it with a piece of untreated 1x2! lol. You can see there is a 2x4 section leaning against the upright swing bar of the left stanchion...it slots down between the two top boards, locking the stanchion closed. You can barely see that there are two small pieces of 1x2s that he screwed on as handles to be able to lift the locking board into and out of it's slot. A similar locking 2x4 board is leaning against the lower rail of the right stanchion, ready to be slotted into place.
This is the rear view of the double stanchion, with the head gates both wide open...coming to an inverted "/\". It shows how we can lock the cows in their spots, and lock the gates in place simply by dropping notched boards over the rails of the side gates, thus bracing the stanchions all the way across to the wall. It looks like there are three stalls, but the middle one is actually an open lane for the milker, complete with upended blue bucket to sit on (had a Scottish mother! We are good at making do, down here in the south, too!). In fact, this isn't quite the way we're using it. The stanchions are rather wide to accomodate a big enough head gate for our horned cows, so we have taken to chaining the back end of the first two gates together behind Katie. This effectively making the gates on either side of her run right up along her flanks in a V shape, making it impossible for her to fidget around. We can snuggle right up along her sides with total security, and it's easy for us to milk her from either side. As we've gotten more used to the milking, we've found that the mobility of those gates has been very handy, as we can swing one side away from Katie and let her heifer calf, Libby, come in to help us stimulate let down. Oh...about those gates, as the floor of our barn is clay with wood shavings and hay over, and we wanted to be sure that the stanchion was as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar, we actually mounted the gates on 4x4s that were in turn mounted with "mail box" post mounting hardware, which has a 3' steel spike that we pounded down in the ground for stability. We then lag bolted the 4x4s to the horizontal boards, to help increase their strength and rigidity. I feared we'd have a rodeo, the first time we shut Katie in, and wanted this stanchion able to take on a bucking bronco. I think it would have...but instead, I think it was the psychological strength of the stanchion that reformed our Katie Bell!
All our herd now thinks of this as "the goodie place", and jostle for a place in the line up to get to come into one or the other stanchion. We try to route them all through, periodically, give them a good brush down and some "treats" so that they are comfortable in an enclosed and controlled space. The only problem I've had with this set up is the fact that some of our animals are still young, have very small horns, and can actually pull their heads out of the head lock, and then push through the open area to one side to come out the front of the stanchion. We need to add a board there to prevent that, but that's easy enough to fix.
Hope I didn't make this clear as mud for you. Feel free to ask questions if I have. Good luck...and we've found that a good stanchion is worth it's weight well behaved milk cows! lol
