Unbased Opinion
Every time I drive over to Doghouse I pass a piece of personal pride and hard work that’s not worth spit anymore. A loading chute. A ramp for loading livestock onto trucks and pens to hold them close.
Chute is floored with pressure treated four by four inch lumber laid across pressure treated six by six inch beams supported by locust posts as it rises from ground level to truck bed height. Sides are one inch oak.
I built the chute late 1980s after Pap died. Old chute of two inch lumber had been trying to rot and fall for years under his supervision and I decided safety of loading/unloading cattle was my problem now. One bull had already stepped through a decayed spot and he didn’t want to try it again after quick repair. That bull was hard to get rid of.
I spent time researching. Farm plans from universities, bulletins from extension services and project plans from farm magazines all furnished competing ideas. Experts on handling cattle had great ideas and reasoning for particular constructions that I didn’t have time or money enough to attempt.
Finally, I used my surveying education to map the available area and subdivide it into various gated holding pens and my chute. I staked everything out to get a better idea of size, gathered materials and got started. Weekends and an occasional evening after work at the newspaper were my construction times.
One of first purchases I made after Pap died was a Danuser post hole digger. He’d not kept fences up as he aged and I didn’t have time to hand dig a bunch of post holes. If I didn’t do much of anything else right about that chute and pens, I did get posts set deep and tight.
And, I didn’t do much else right. Pens were built with too many square corners. Give an old cow a square corner and she’ll stand in it and look nasty till you go chase her out. She’ll promptly find another corner to be chased out of if one is handy. I didn’t build enough curves to keep animals headed in correct directions with fewer places to hide.
Board fences were strong enough, but not high enough. They stood tight enough to handle red and white Herefords, but black Angus and Angus Hereford crosses were too much to hold. Not many things are more disheartening than watching a mean looking Black Baldy crash through top board on what you thought was a solid barrier.
I built a small gated opening that fit my brand new portable handling chute. Much as Pap prized working on farms which had safe efficient handling systems, he never got one at home. Most of our home veterinary work involved roping, wrestling and wallowing large dangerous animals into temporary submission with attendant scrapes and bruises.
Last thing I built was that loading chute. Pig tight, bull strong and built to last a lifetime. Problems? I built it in the wrong place, aimed in wrong direction. Didn’t give enough weight to thought on sizes of the trucks backing to it or skills of drivers in reverse I spent more time guiding driver back to it than I did pushing cow up the chute into the truck.
I used the whole mess several years. Better than any system we had before, Pap would have been proud of it, but still it was too little too late and largely fouled up. I sold myself out of farming business in 1996 and rented Tommy Rinard, neighbor across Cacapon River. Black Angus and Black Baldies moved in, more profitable, but harder to hold Tacked on fence additions became necessary.
Death knell of loading chute came first time a livestock trailer complete with integral low ramp hooked to a pickup truck backed up to a pen made of portable metal gates. Far as I know my wonderful loading chute hasn’t been used in fifteen years. An obsolete curiosity over night, until it is discarded, just as I’ve discarded most of the old farm structures my ancestors used here for past century or more.
I wonder how long my chute will stand.
