I have been studying William's livestock handling for a couple of years now and have taken the Stockmanship Journal. After about 25 years with a solid sided curved alley way and tub I came to the conclusion that Grandin was a much better salesman than she is cattle handler. If you don't want to spend the time to learn how to handle cattle, by all means follow her advice and build your facilities full of curves and funnels and full sheeted alleys. If you want to take a little time to learn how to handle cattle you can significantly reduce the costs of handling equipment needed.
I have pretty well finished rebuilding our entire corral this past fall and winter. We tore out everything that was there, leveled it up and hauled in 18 loads of dirt to fill in the holes and make it drain better. Then I built some square pens, straight alleys and bud boxes. Everything that simply won't work, if you follow Grandin's advice. It is so simple and works so well that it is easy to get mad at myself for spending so many years messing around with what was never going to work very good instead of taking the time to figure out how to handle cattle. We now have a double alley, fed by a bud box, feeding a single alley. They are half sheeted so we can work everything from the ground and the cattle can see us. It takes some training, but it is so much better than what we were using that it has removed much of the stress of working cattle.
