Irish farms operate on an average of 2.5 land parcels – meaning the majority operate with a home farm block complemented by one or two out-blocks. Gearoid Lillis is farming outside the village of Cooraclare, Co Clare, with a similar situation on his own farm.
A 40-acre outblock is used for several silage cuts during the summer, with grazing confined to the shoulders of the year. With no handling facility on the block, Gearoid employed local agricultural building contractor, Declan Fennell, to create a purpose-built yard to make handling and loading of cattle safer and easier. Now, Gearoid has a 16.45m x 4.87m (54ft x 16ft) handling pen, complete with a cattle chute, on the block.
The yard has a 13.4m running along one wall, with a backing and sculling gate fitted, with an additional dividing gate in the center.
Sloping site
Declan worked with the sloping nature of the site, pouring the 1.5m x 0.225m foundation to the same contour as the ground on each side of the pen. A good deal of digger work was carried out, before building a solid gravel base underneath. Steel rebar was inserted in to the foundation, with Declan inserting upright U-bars to tie the foundation into the wall.
A 200mm wide and 2.4m high shuttered wall was then poured, with further rebar installed horizontally between the upright U-bars. After the concrete was cured, Declan returned to install the 44ft long cattle chute.
The walls of the pen run parallel to the slope of the roadway alongside.
Handling chute
Box pillars were cast in 42N concrete, with the chute panels hung off these. O’Donovan Engineering-manufactured panels were used, sourced from Kilmihill Hardware. The chute measures 13.4m (44ft) in length, with a backing gate at one end and a semi-automatic skulling gate at the upper end. The skulling gate is fixed to the end box pillar and the wall, with Declan opting not to chisel out the wall to fit the gate. Instead, he cut the headgate to allow it to be flush will the mass concrete wall. A heavy duty gate hung from the shuttered wall divides the pen in two, to allow treated and untreated animals to be kept seperate.
No floor was installed in the pen, but this is something Gearoid can do in the future. Due to the amount of steel installed in the walls, the option of roofing the yard through bolting RSJs on to the top of the mass concrete wall would also be viable, according to Declan. The roofed yard could then be used for parking machinery, or storing straw over the winter months when there are no cattle on the land.
The shuttered concrete wall has sufficient steel in it to allow for RSJs to be bolted to the top of the wall and a roof created over the yard for storage.
Cost
The costs are listed in Table 1. The yard is finished to a high specification for a yard that will not be in regular use, but with no yard having been on the block, investment had to be put into a facility regardless. The option to roof over the yard and use it as storage over the winter months would increase the usage of the shed hugely, and is likely an option to be considered in time.
Irish farms operate on an average of 2.5 land parcels – meaning the majority operate with a home farm block complemented by one or two out-blocks. Gearoid Lillis is farming outside the village of Cooraclare, Co Clare, with a similar situation on his own farm.
A 40-acre outblock is used for several silage cuts during the summer, with grazing confined to the shoulders of the year. With no handling facility on the block, Gearoid employed local agricultural building contractor, Declan Fennell, to create a purpose-built yard to make handling and loading of cattle safer and easier. Now, Gearoid has a 16.45m x 4.87m (54ft x 16ft) handling pen, complete with a cattle chute, on the block.
The yard has a 13.4m running along one wall, with a backing and sculling gate fitted, with an additional dividing gate in the center.
Sloping site
Declan worked with the sloping nature of the site, pouring the 1.5m x 0.225m foundation to the same contour as the ground on each side of the pen. A good deal of digger work was carried out, before building a solid gravel base underneath. Steel rebar was inserted in to the foundation, with Declan inserting upright U-bars to tie the foundation into the wall.
A 200mm wide and 2.4m high shuttered wall was then poured, with further rebar installed horizontally between the upright U-bars. After the concrete was cured, Declan returned to install the 44ft long cattle chute.
The walls of the pen run parallel to the slope of the roadway alongside.
Handling chute
Box pillars were cast in 42N concrete, with the chute panels hung off these. O’Donovan Engineering-manufactured panels were used, sourced from Kilmihill Hardware. The chute measures 13.4m (44ft) in length, with a backing gate at one end and a semi-automatic skulling gate at the upper end. The skulling gate is fixed to the end box pillar and the wall, with Declan opting not to chisel out the wall to fit the gate. Instead, he cut the headgate to allow it to be flush will the mass concrete wall. A heavy duty gate hung from the shuttered wall divides the pen in two, to allow treated and untreated animals to be kept seperate.
No floor was installed in the pen, but this is something Gearoid can do in the future. Due to the amount of steel installed in the walls, the option of roofing the yard through bolting RSJs on to the top of the mass concrete wall would also be viable, according to Declan. The roofed yard could then be used for parking machinery, or storing straw over the winter months when there are no cattle on the land.
The shuttered concrete wall has sufficient steel in it to allow for RSJs to be bolted to the top of the wall and a roof created over the yard for storage.
Cost
The costs are listed in Table 1. The yard is finished to a high specification for a yard that will not be in regular use, but with no yard having been on the block, investment had to be put into a facility regardless. The option to roof over the yard and use it as storage over the winter months would increase the usage of the shed hugely, and is likely an option to be considered in time.
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