Description
“Everything is big in Texas”. This high speed shipping/receiving, processing, sorting, and weighing facility was designed to be flexible. Shipping and receiving can be done in the truck ramp attached to the angled sorting pens when processing cattle is being done in the main curved handling chutes. Both areas have stock trailer chutes, one is a drive-thru the other a back-up chute. Cattle are weighed in the large scale and then held in the sorting/shipping pens at the top of the page, or in the angled pens. More than 1200 cattle move through this facility on a daily basis. The drawing shows the minimum of grooved concrete floors, but it was recommended for the integrity of the facility and the safety for cattle and people to pour and groove concrete in all the pens and alleys. Especially important when designing high speed facilities, the three most important principles should be considered; install solid sided fences in high use areas like the curved lane and crowd pen. Cattle fear only what they can see. Blocking vision with solid fences keeps them calm. Deep groove concrete floors also keep cattle calm, and give them confidence to walk through the facility The last principle is curved fences. Curved fences make cattle think they’re going back where they came from, and prevents abrupt corners or chutes that appear dead-ended.
