Riding with the hooftrimmer part 3

[jkvikefan]

Bringing a cow into the chute

Pulling up the feet
Trimming with an angle grinder

Batteries went dead ... Hope you enjoyed the ride

 

[leanin' H]

Thanks for showing me something i've never seen! When I read the title i thought you went with a horse shoer! How many cows did ya trim and could ya do my toenails before Valentines day? My wife would love ya!

 

[Soapweed]

Interesting procedure, thanks for the picture tour. Back when my dad had an annual Hereford bull sale (from 1973-1984), that was always one of the preliminary jobs. We had a wooden table with winches, kind of an overgrown calf table, that we used for tipping the bulls on their sides to trim their feet. I don't miss those days.

 

[Blkbuckaroo]

That was a neat little photo trip,that's quite a contraption there,about how many head do you take trim per day??

 

[per]

Thanks for the tour. I never gave it much thought before but I suppose a dairy is selecting for milk and not quite as worried about good feet (at least genetically) as would a commercial guy in a more hands off situation.

 

[Yanuck]

my husband used to trim feet, he had a hydraulic table that laid them on their side though, when we moved south he sold it to my brother, a person can make good money at it, but you earn every penny!! thanks for the trip down memory lane!

 

[jkvikefan]

Thanks. I thought you may like to see something a little different. I normally do about 20-25 cows a day. The barn that I was working in is a compost barn. They use sawdust for bedding and use a 6 ft chisel plow to work it up every day. It is designed for cow comfort and cleanliness. It may have looked like the cows were standing in manure but if was sawdust and the cows are very clean.I was glad to be inside as the wind was howling about 25 mph and the temp was 10 degrees F.I'll try to get a few pictures of some of the hoof ailments that I see on a day to day basis. Dairy producers do breed for proper hoof structure just as beef producers do ,but the milk cows, for the most part, don't have the advantage of standing in lush ,clean pastures as their beef counterparts....Soap, Do you remember who did the trimming on your bulls.when I was younger, we had a trimmer from Pierre, SD, He had a chute mounted on the back of a Ford dually. It was a slick rig.

 

[MsSage]

jkvikefan Friday I will get you some pics of the chute we use its pretty cool. I can get shots of it tomorrow with no cows in it so you can see all the bells and whistles.
When the "real trimmer" comes on Fri he can do about 40-60 in a 10 hour day. Depends on if he has to treat or just trim.
Yall have a VERY HARD job.
Thanks for sharing

 

[jkvikefan]

10hrs....are you kidding me....sheesh...that is a long day. I have done 50 in a day quite a few times and have done over 70 in a day twice. It takes a couple of days to recover from those days . That's why I like to stick to 20-25 a day. I have never trimmed in a tip table chute but I would like to try it sometime. In fact I have a second chute in the shop that is a tip table that needs some work .The trouble I have with most tip tables is that they have the belts that go around the cattle. When the feet come off the ground they start to kick and thrash around. That is when they hurt themselves. The chute I am working on has a floor that will drop away when the cow is on her side.