The cubicles are of a cantilever type. They are space sharing not unlike the Dutch Super Comfort cubicles. The main advantage of these cubicles is that they have no rear leg so there really is no way for a cow to get stuck which always was a problem with the old Newton Rigg type.The cubicles are 7 feet long and 3 feet 11 inches wide (centre to centre). The cubicles one leg which is made of four inch box section is set 12 inches out from the wall. A head rail has been welded to the top of the cubicles at the top of this leg. This keeps the cow from coming too far forward and provides her with a lunging space. The cows lunge to the side which I have been told is the best way. The cubicle has a four inch slope to it. 

The centre block of cubicles instead of being 14 feet across as you might expect is actually only 13′ 6″ as the cows can share their lunging space. In addition to the head rails there are two rails lower down which stop the cattle walking through the cubicles. This is important when you want to keep the two sides segregated.

Due to the nature of our building work last year we were unable to house our milking cows in this house. However we had dry cows, springing dairy heifer replacements, dry limousin suckler cows and springing limousin replacement beef cows. What I was most interested in was how the fully grown dry cows liked the cubicles, as the rest of the stock will be housed in the older sheds when the building project is completed. While some straw was put down at the start as you can see in the photograph above we do not bed dry stock. Even so I was very impressed with the occupancy rate of the cubicles. The cows lay in much better shape to that in which they lay in the old cubicles. One thing I did notice the cows much prefered the side cubicles which faced the walls to the double cubicles in the centre. This may be because they had never had experience of a open double row before. The younger stock didn’t seem to mind the centre cubicles nearly so much.

We have now placed Canadian pasture mats in the cubicles which the cows seem to enjoy. Occupancy rate particularly among heifers had increased dramaticly. These require less bedding than bare cubicles.

Sorry the above plan doesn’t look so good. But it does show you a the layout of the building. his layout is basically an exact copy of the layout of our older cubicle house except it is in a nice new portal frame building and the cubicles are larger and of a better design.