Feedlot Design Layout

General design principles are:

• To maintain clean, dry pens survey the site and do the earthwork to obtain a uniform 2 - 4% pen slope.
• Locate feeding pen runoff drains outside of the feeding pens. This makes the best use of the pen area. Two options are to have combined cattle handling alley and drain or to have separate alleys and runoff drains.
• Design the runoff drainage system not to interfere with feeding roadways.
• Minimize interference between cattle handling alleys and feeding roadways. Feed trucks that have to wait for cattle to cross a roadway are not as efficient.
• Design all cattle alleys, feeding roadways, gates, and pen runoff drains so that flow is not restricted.
• Minimize travel distance for cattle, feed trucks and manure equipment, 25% less travel may reduce annual operating costs by 6 - 10%.
• A single-vehicle entry past an office and scale can improve security.
• Take care to engineer high-quality road bases, good-quality feed bunks and pads, and proper water system installation.

Pen Arrangement

Single Row 

Double Row

For additional information about feedlot design view the video below.

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