 Hello and welcome to this edition of the Cattleman's Web Update. Cattle ranchers tend to be getting larger and less help around. Cattle working facilities are becoming much more of a necessity that are functional and well designed and can minimize the stress on both the cattle and the people working. We're in the Leland Red Angus Ranch located in Southwest McKinsey County today with Todd Leland and Melvin Leland, the owners and operators. They've got some excellent working facilities here and we'd just like to share a little bit with you some of the features they have. And Mel, I was going to ask you, you know, the first thing that we probably look for in Cattlehand facility is a large corral to gather cattle in. Would you tell us a little bit about your system here? Yeah, we try to have our setup to where cattle will flow into it when we gather them and bring them in and have large enough pens to where cattle aren't too crowded. Cattle don't like to be jammed together and then we do some initial sorting out of the bigger pens. I notice you've got some different sized pens out here. Can you just tell us a little bit how you bring your cattle in and how it works? We normally bring cattle in from the west here or sometimes from the east depending on which passage we're coming in from. We'll bring them around and put a large group over in that pen to sort cows and calves. We've got two gates there. We can put a man on each gate and put three, four people horseback. And we can sort cows and calves very quickly. Cows will flow out and calves will hold back. And then when we get ready to vaccinate or whatever we're going to do with the herd after they're separated, well then we can come around into this pen and come down our alley to do other sorting or loading or whatever we're going to do with it. I think that brings us up to another point today. After sorting our pens, you need a functional set of alleys. I notice you've got about 16 foot wide and you've got a number of different alleys here. Do you just process cows or do you also do some cleaning? We weigh a lot of cattle out of here for neighbors. We have a certified scale here. The neighbors have shipped cattle out of here and so the cash is well for that as well. It wasn't built with that design in mind but it works well that way so we can do it. But even people that don't weigh out cattle, a lot of times you have to sort off heifers or things. The sorting alley is pretty important. It's part of any working facility that you say. Absolutely. And to have it functional to where you can go different directions if you need to for your sorting so you don't have to mill the cattle around. Maybe we could go down and talk to show us some of the sorting features you've got. A number of sorting gates and I should mention that Leland Red Angus also run a registered herd so they have to do a lot of sorting, not only calves and more calves but also yearlings and adult animals as well. Todd, I don't know if you have a number of gates here that you can do some sorting off of. If you just go a couple of different directions, two or three people can handle it pretty easy. One guy can run both of these gates and it works best to have two people in the alley if you have the second one to follow you to bring cattle down. And then like when we AI we go several different directions so we'll get a few more people and we can go seven different directions. We've got a couple different directions over there and then we can go about three different directions this way. So you've got a design on you where you can kind of take advantage of cattle's behavior aspects as well. What they'd like to do. Yeah, they're like as far as loading out and stuff. We can bring them up that alley over there and kind of going back the way they come from and the same as when we go into the working facilities, we'll bring them up the alley over there and then they can turn around and come right back the way they come in. So they think they're getting back. So now the next piece of the equipment I guess we need is a good gathering tenant and working animal. Let's go take a look at that. So you're designed to take care of the cattle behavior that they tend to like to go where they just came from. Right. Cattle like to go where they've been comfortable. So we come back around and there's a curb to our working facility here. It usually works best to bring them like cows bring about five cows at a time. They'll flow up and then we've got a butt stop or bars that we can use and then get another five. We can hold about eight, nine cows at a time in the alleyway, but it usually works best to put them in about five or six at a time. So if we had somebody that actually had limited health, this would work actually pretty good. Two to three people could do a pretty good job of working cattle. Three people, especially if the person back here works quietly, could keep those cattle just flowing. And sometimes you don't even have to move. You just they'll follow each other right on through. I noticed you've got totally enclosed alleys. Do you think that's a necessity or can it work if somebody even has an open alley? I think if you have a curved system, it's better to have a curved. If you have an open side system, I think you're better off to have a straight line shoot way. Let people work with the materials they've got and the cattle they've got. I know you've incorporated some features so you can do AI. You can work calves. You can sort off whether they're bulls or heifers before your sale. Maybe just take a few minutes to explain some of the features you have here, Mel, in your facility. Well, first of all, we've invested in a hydraulic silencer shoot, which we like very well. It does have a scale under it. A title function that scale it. Hydraulic will lift up so you can clean out underneath to make it nice and clean. Then it drops back down to your weighing position. And that way, when you're medicating cattle, we have the scale there. Check for your weights and get your doses as accurate. You do have a canopy over the shoot, primarily just under incoming conditions. It's nice to be able to stay dry. Also, in cases of wind, we have rolled tarps down the side to shut off the wind, which are essential at some points. But also with the hydraulic shoot and your electronic and hose hydraulic components, it's nice to keep them protected from the sun and the elements. We don't actually do any AI and to speak of here outside of maybe some isolated cases. We do that in a pasture situation. We don't like to do that in the system that we normally work our cattle in just because it's cattle are a little more comfortable if they're not in a crowding situation when you're breeding. But for folks, though, that do want to AI a paleo-patient shoot or some kind of blocking alley to get in and out would be a very important feature, wouldn't it? Oh, yes. I want to thank Melvin and Todd Leland and the folks here at Leland Red Angus Ranch for taking the time to share their facilities with us. You know, they've got a lot of nice features on theirs that hopefully may be some ideas you can incorporate into yours. Coming up on the next screen, there are some websites that, if you wanted to learn more about cattle behavior, cattle handling facilities, go ahead and take care of those. And, you know, stay tuned for future CattleWeb updates that will be out on the web here in the future.