Introduction
There are many different drafting gates on the market at the moment. All of them perform the same task and have the same benefit. Having the gate on farm means a task that would have normally needed two people to perform, and cause stress to the cows, is now a task that does not require anyone to complete, only requiring cow data to be inputted in.
All drafting gates require some kind of space in front of the exit race for the gate the be placed and work effectively. Comparing a Rotary to a Herringbone Cowshed, 9 times out of 10, the Rotary cowshed is going to have more room and be easier to place, and the majority of Rotary cowsheds have a decent sized exit race, allowing for the drafting gate to be placed in this race. Comparing this to a Herringbone cowshed, 50% of the time there is not a whole lot of room the place a gate in front of the shed, before the farm race. Utilizing the space that you have, and making sure the gate is placed correctly is very important to improve cow flow to and through the gate.
Comparison
| Gate Name | Company | Drafting Reader | Gate Type | Num. of Draft Directions | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Protrack Draft | Sensehub Dairy | EID | Outward/With Cow | 3-way | $49,990 + GST |
| Sensehub Intellitage-P | Sensehub Dairy | Collar | Inward/Towards Cow | 3-way | $52,000 + GST |
| Sensehub Intellitage-S | Sensehub Dairy | Collar | Inward/Towards Cow | 3-way | $35,900 + GST |
| EasyDairy | Herd Automation | EID | Inward/Towards Cow | 3-way | $40,699 + GST |
| DTS | MilkTechNZ | EID | Inward/Towards Cow | 3-way | $TBC |
| Sort Gate | Waikato Milking Systems | EID | Inward/Towards Cow | 3-way | $TBC |
Things to Think About
There are a couple of different things to consider when choosing a drafting gate.
First is to consider when installing a drafting gate is how much room there is to add holding pens. Depending on the number of draft directions (2 or 3 way drafting gate), you will want to have a pen on each side of the drafting gate. This will allow you to have the option of drafting cows either left, right, or straight, meaning you can have three different groups drafting at the same time. This can be useful when it is mating time, as you can draft mating cows to one side, sick cows to the other side, and the remaining herd straight. This gives flexibility when you want to draft, and means that you do not have to sort cows out when the drafting is complete.
Second is how much work other work is going to have to happen to get the gate installed and the other pens (if they don’t exist already) completed. There are a couple of different options that can be considered when looking at the pens. Most people, for one of the pens will use where the cows walk in. This does depend on how your cowshed is set up, however, it is a possibility for both Rotary and Herringbone cowsheds.
Thinking about where your loading ram is, and how you can create a pen to be situated around this means you will be easily able to draft cows going on to the track to this pen, and load them to the ramp right from the pen.
Pen size is very important when deciding on how big you are going to make them. The best way to figure this out normally is how many cows you might have on for a single AB run, making sure you can fit all of the cows in one pen. This means that when you are in the middle of mating, you will not need to worry that the pen is going to fill up in the middle of milking.
