Working Ranch Magazine March/April 2025

handling, sorting & scales BY TIFFANY SELCHOW Two Heads Are Better Than One What are the benefits of asking a rep to design it for you?

and can lend you their knowledge to ensure you are getting exactly what you want. A large piece of the puzzle an engi neer can solve is the ever-important topic of safety, both for cattle and humans. Efficiency is often a top consideration but should never be placed over safety. Rosslyn Biggs, DVM, assistant clinical professor and beef cattle extension specialist at Oklahoma State University, echoes Dr. McFarlane’s sentiments while adding the importance of safety to the equation. “How efficient can I be with keeping the number one prior ity, human safety, shortly followed by animal safety and welfare?” is the question Dr. Biggs says we should ask as we design a working facility. Dr. Biggs suggests instead of just letting a single representative han dle your design, build a team that can then help to build a plan with the design engineer playing a criti cal role. The operation’s needs must be at the forefront of the team’s mind throughout the entire process, and a professional can help ensure that pri ority ranking. A team should include experts such as a veterinarian. Your vet is a critical part of the team and is often doing a lot of the hands-on work with the cat tle whether that’s preg-checking cows or fertility-testing bulls. This team mate will have specific requirements and may want to include features such as a vet box at the back of your squeeze chute and various side doors for easy access to injection sites. Another focus for your team might include an expert in Beef Quality Assurance. BQA, a Beef Checkoff funded program, was shown in a

ADOBE/CARRIE

ow we raise cattle in the U.S. is as diverse a practice as the landscape it’s done upon. From California, where most work is done outside, including the chute side tasks, to Oklahoma, where one wants and often needs a barn to process cattle in the winter months, designing a cattle handling facility can be a daunting task. Each cattle operation has its own nuances, personalities, and goals, which means each working facility varies, much like snow flakes; no two are exactly alike.

work as you envision, but they can also help you understand the full cost.” Dr. McFarlane, who tasks his stu dents with designing facilities, allows them to create exactly what they would want without cost concerns, which he grants is rarely the case in the real world. His point in doing his assignments this way is to allow students to explore a wide variety of designs and a broader scope of knowl edge when they graduate. An expert is someone who has worked in vari ous areas and applications in the field

Enlisting the help of a professional cattle handling system designer may not be the first thing to cross one’s mind when one sets out to develop a facility, but it needs to be considered. Dr. Zach McFarlane, Associate Professor and Beef Cattle Specialist at California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo, full-heartedly recommends enlist ing the help of an expert and says, “Having professional help to design your facility is a big benefit. Not only can they help ensure the design will

42 I MARCH 2025 WORKING RANCH audited readers run 21 million head of beef cattle.