Dexter Cattle For Sale Discussion Board

We spotted one the other day from afar & invited ourselves for a look at it. The owner was most obliging, despitre not knowing me from Adam, and very enthusiastic about his new building that was so easy to use & much better for the cows. He was Keeping South Devons in it. Does anyone know of others around them or, by any chance, know of a Dexter breeder who has one?

http://www.roundhouseltd.co.uk/

I think there is a guy in Northern Ireland that houses his dexters like this. I believe people attending the AGM last year visited him. I'm sure the Northern Ireland group would be able to supply his name.
Steve

Round might be OK if you have unlimited, cheap land available. But rectangular has to be a million percentage more efficient surely? Maybe that's why 99.9% of buildings are rectangular

It was Mike Frazer who has a roundhouse in N Ireland, we saw it at the AGM 2011. An extremely efficient way to handle and accomadate cattle all year round, but not for me i am afraid. Traditional buildings and grazing at our farm.

Broomcroft wrote:Round might be OK if you have unlimited, cheap land available. But rectangular has to be a million percentage more efficient surely? Maybe that's why 99.9% of buildings are rectangular

Far superior ventilation though, most cattle buildings encourage pneumonia, this was like they were outside, inside. Excellent feeder space too - it gets over the old problem of needing massive pens to get the feeder frontage. Seeing how easy it was to handle cattle, clean it out & feed/bed up I think it'd soon pay for itself (costs 25% more than a conventional building) that was his main concern - "I just wanted an easier life". But you can store corn in a rectangular building...

Thanks for Mike Frazers name - I might have to look him up if ever I'm out that way.

Can't imagine bedding down on a windy day! You'd have to drive a 100m away and guess where it will land

My thought on how the design could be improved is a wind turbine stuck on the top of the central post.

We're reerecting a portal frame though, so there's not going to be one here anytime soon but I'm quite jealous of how easy it was for him & how good the cattle looked after a winter in there.

its a nice idea but having build our own barns in the traditional way over the last 6 years, the one thing I wished I had done at the very beginning was put in a concrete base. Now all pens have a concrete floor and the difference when you come to clean out the pens is so noticeable, so if you consider a round house, make sure you have a concrete base before you go any further.

The other consideration to make is access to feed barriers and also a gated race, we have spent may an hour moving gates and were not satisfied until we had a permanent race, which is constructed from cattle hurdles, I do see that these folks have that covered, no pun intended.

any way thats my thoughts

carole

We're laying the concrete slab for our building this week - ten years of managing without one & I'm fed up of picking rocks up out of the fields after the muck spreader...

It's going up adjacent to the existing building with a gap to create a central feed passage, we've always used ring feeders since moving here but having to go into the shed to feed & bed up is too inefficient. I feel your pain with portable gates - having a yard that cattle can't escape from while moving them is going to make things so much easier. The roundhouse just takes it to a whole new level, though, it couldn't be easier for one-man operation. Concreting the rest of the yard is going to take priority over a roundhouse here.

Broomcroft wrote:Round might be OK if you have unlimited, cheap land available. But rectangular has to be a million percentage more efficient surely? Maybe that's why 99.9% of buildings are rectangular

I've just had a look at our yard, which is triangular, and one of the smaller roundhouses would cover our entire cattle buildings, feed passage & handling system, plus where the barn is going to go. Might have to buy nextdoor before I can put one up here, but it's more to do with overall size, than shape.