Low cost cubicle up-grade

Importance of positioning cow

This company is the single biggest supplier of cubicle mats to the UK market, selling 25,000 - 30,000 units each year, and it became involved in up-grading cubicles because it observed that a lot of poorly designed cubicles were being installed.

John Parsons, national sales manager in the UK with Cow Comfort, believes that it is essential that the cubicle division should be capable of getting the cows to lie straight in the bed. He identifies the cantilever cubicle as being the worst offender as it encourages cows to lie diagonally, resulting in injuries and excessive soiling of the bed.

A profile of the typical dairy farmer dealing with Cow Comfort indicates that he has a herd size of 100 cows plus, with little investment having been made over the past 12 - 15 years. The majority of the cubicles do not have mats, but are straw bedded and labour costs are now becoming a serious issue on these farms.

The UK does not have a welfare code specifying that cubicle mats must be used, but quality assurance schemes are now beginning to bring pressure to bear in this area.

Many of these units are now having to carry out a general overhaul, tackling a whole range of issues including poor cubicle usage, injuries to cows, poor slurry management facilities and general animal welfare issues.

Removing unnecessary steelwork

The University of Liverpool Woodpark Farm, at Neston on the Wirral, Cheshire, milks 120 cows with an average yield of 9,500 litres (2,090 gallons) per cow.

The cubicles here are the Newton Rigg design which were installed around 20 years ago. This design has three legs set into the concrete cubicle bed and you will always see evidence of a lot of rubbing to the front of the centre leg, where the cow's body leans against it when she is lying down. In addition, this centre leg prevents space sharing by the cows.

Farm manager, John Byran, points out that there is a lot of Canadian Holstein blood in his cows and they were getting too big for the cubicles, which are 6 ft (1.8m) long and 3ft 8inches (1.1m) wide, centre to centre.

This resulted in the cows looking very uncomfortable because of their pin bones hitting against the bars, and also a lot of hock injuries.

In addition, he had a lot of problems getting heifers to take to the cubicles, and many of them got injured as a result.

Last summer, Cow Comfort cut out the two intermediate bars in these cubicles and replaced them with a tensioned 2 inch nylon strap, running between the front and back legs, leaving a clearance of 15 inches between it and the cubicle bed at the point where the brisket board is fitted.

John Parsons argues that this height is fairly critical; it should be low enough to allow the cow to comfortably place her head over it but not high enough to allow her to put her head under it.

This strap should be level, which means that it will be approximately three inches higher from the bed at the back compared to the front, depending on the degree of slope in the cubicle bed.

In this position, it should be comfortable for the cow to lie with her hip bone leaning against the strap, which is sufficiently flexible to allow for some space sharing by the cows. In addition, the headrail was removed and the front rail raised in order to allow the cows more room to lunge forward, when getting up and down.

A sleeper was fitted, as a brisket board, 5.5ft (1.68m) from the edge of the cubicle bed. Normally, John Parsons recommends that this should be 5.75ft (1.75m) from the passageway but, because of the small cubicle size, compromise was necessary. Fig 2 illustrates what the cubicle looks like after it has been modified. Mayomats were installed in the cubicles and these are bedded with a shake of chopped straw to mop up any moisture that is carried into the bed on the cows' hoofs.