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W and W chute and AI

R

Red Robin

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 23, 2005
Messages
4,377
Location
8 mi S.E. of Harrison, Ar.
I bred 20 cows in a WW chute tonight for a neighbor. It's an old one. Out of 20 the head catcher lost on when she came through with her foot out in front. Obviously she had been through there before. We had 3 choke down. One we had to let out , one we let back and one I bred while she was down and we let her gather her witts and get out. Those things are a man killer too. The palp cage is too close to the cow. You had to catch their heads to have enough room behind her and the tailgate isn't big enough and this one wouldnt' stay latched down. They'd get their head under it and come crawling in. It wasn't tall enough either so they could reach over and kiss the back of my neck. Not an enjoyable evening. All's well that ends well I guess. They were blacks with a nasty attitude.
 
the chute is too short you can't put a pole behind mosy cows unless you catch their head. They are truly a piece of crap but I know where you can buy one.
 
Alot of the old chutes were too small.Every company improves their product as time passes.I guess if it were mine I would take it in the shop and add a little lenght to it a 12" extension between the chute and the palp cage and fine tune the headcatch and I bet it would work just fine.

I have seen some of the NEW WW products and they are fine product.

I dont like when people Degrade a companies product of yesteryear compared to those they build now.It's not fair to that company.You can't always start with the best product or where would you improve.

Also alot of companies make a couple of product lines the generic hobby time systems which work but are a bit ackward and then the top of the line product.

The amount of money spent dictates the quality of the product you can't buy the top of the line chute at the lowest price.
 
I agree with Denny.

I've got an old Powder River that was a vast improvement in it's day, and I have done some upgrading and need to do more now.

At the price of a new one and for no more than I use it, I could make it almost as handy as one of these new ones, for not a lot of money.

If we all could afford it, we'd have top of the line.

I'll bet that chute was handier than two panels tied together or ropin' the cow and A I'ing her on the end of a rope, wasn't it? :wink:
 
The problem I see with a lot of chutes and headgates, regardless of the make, is that there are too many holes for feet, legs and noses to poke through. Selfcatch and manual types all have their good and bad points, but nothing confuses a cow more than a bunch of bars 6-8 inches apart when she is coming in.
 
I call them as I see them-if it helps somebody by not buying one at an auction sale or whatever good. The chute mentioned was an old WW and the OLD WW's are a piece of junk. I know I owned one. I was commenting on the OLD model.
 
We always catch the heads for A.I. the cows have been trained as heifers to stand. Its easy, just never let them back out the first time through, oh yeah, and don't use the crazy genetics.

We run a Payson, basically a copy of a Pearson made by some farm boys in Saskabush. Best investment ever. We almost never have an issue with the chute...but they all need the odd repair from time to time.

The chute is a parallel squeeze and has a floor in it and an attached palp cage. I find it is too narrow for my shoulders if you squeeze heifers in when breeding as it is long enough you need to be in the squeeze part to reach the smaller ones.

Dad still does 90% of the A.I while I am doing other things, he likes them squeezed a bit.
 
Denny said:
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I dont like when people Degrade a companies product of yesteryear compared to those they build now.It's not fair to that company.
Click to expand...
Denny I didn't compare them to anything. This chute was a dangerous piece of junk to cows and men. If I owned one, I'd make scrap iron out of it. If you want a compairison though, in a barn on a rent place there is an all wood chute that is way older than this one and it's safe for men and cattle. It works good.
 
The real bad old-time WW chutes were the ones that had a guilliotine affair. This consisted of a "u" up and a "u" down. The bottom one stayed in place, and the top one came down on top of a cow's neck. A cow was just about guaranteed to choke down in this outfit, and when they did, the dying cow would fall right on top of the lever that you needed to get to so that she could be released. :mad: When Peach Blossom and I were starting out, I bought one for $50 from a rancher that had bought a new chute. After we killed the first cow in that piece of junk, I bought another new $800 chute, figuring it to be an "investment" instead of an "expenditure." It was money well spent.

My dad had a WW chute for many years. He bought it out at the Denver Stock Show back in the late '70's. It came with a palpation cage and a curved adjustable alley. We ran a lot of cattle through it. This was certainly an improvement over the guilliotine deal, as it had a standard up and down neck catch. It was designed to be "self catching," but also had a stationary handle on it so that a person could pull the handle around if a critter was going through too fast.

One time a cow started to choke down before we were done processing her. I turned loose the head catch to give her some air, but I held onto the handle hoping to keep her in until the other vaccinations were given. Somehow my elbow hung up on one of the vertical bars. As the cow fell out of the chute, my right thumb hung up on the handle and was bent clear back until it almost touched my arm. Man but that hurt! I just knew my hand was broken, but luckily it turned out to be just a bad sprain. I always figured that my lifetime of drinking too much chocolate milk at least helped keep the calcium level up high enough that I healed fast from that and other wrecks through the years. :wink: :-)

We have since replaced the WW squeeze chute with a Priefert, but the WW palpation cage and curved alleyway still get regular and frequent use. They have stood the test of time fairly well.
 
I remember in the Olden days when a rancher would use a Bull to breed thier cows......oh wait a minute we still do,I don't get this AI thing at all.
 
I don't know the brand of chute we have - - - they must not have been to proud of it as I can't find a name on it. But I thought it was just the ticket in the late 1960s.

It still works very well although I have had to make a few repairs but it is small for today's cattle and I intend to widen it 3" and lengthen it about a foot before fall.

That will still be much cheaper than buying a new one and I'll keep it around as long as it is safe.

One of the neighbors just spent a lt of money on a new chute and I am gld he got what he wanted as he has worked cattle for about 40 years between two gates as his grandfather would not stand for spending money for something as silly as a chute when gates worked - - - the grandfather made a fortune with a stock car race track but felt the money stayed with the track.
 
The heifers we retain see the chute once before they are bred A.I. that being at branding/tattooing time.

The natural tendancy is for them to pull back as hard as they can.

We try not to allow them to ever get released backwards. We will push them forward, twist the tail put a bar behind them, anything to get them to learn they go out the front.

Usually when they hit the same chute for A.I. they remember they go forward... sometimes they push forward the whole time, but usually they just stand.

Decent disposition helps as well as a calm manner when handling them. Just a small thing to do, but we have ran lease cows from others and have to train them to go forward too. Cows take a couple times through, but heifers seem to learn it the first time.
 
A friend of mine took some cows in on shares one time that were chute sour witches. I mean nasty to work. The ones that won't balk would run you over.

He asked me if I thought it would help to run the cows all back through the chute after working them, but wiith no pressure of getting caught, shot etc. His point was to make it so they had to go through the chute before they got to go out the gate and back to the pasture. I told him I thought he was nuts.

But, I told him I would help him. So after we were done working cows, he sent everyone to the house for dinner (noon :wink: ). The two of us and one other guy ran all 225 cows back though the chute. But, we did it in a big string, just one behind the other, no little groups like when you sort them through to fill the chute to vaccinate.


It seemed to help a little the next time, so we did it again. I tell you what. The extra 1 1/2 hour of work total it took to take the time to do that with those sorry rips was entirely worth it. It literally cut down on all the trouble with those cows, nearly eliminating it. He then just got rid of the worst offenders and it was a done deal. Sometimes, messing around with these silly ideas really works.

They come in, they head for the chute leaving the calves behind. They stand there, they take their shot, they walk out toward the gate and leave. I honestly haven't been around many groups of cattle that are easier to handle.

Badlands
 

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