When it comes to cattle health, hospital systems are one of the most important parts of any operation.
The way we design and manage hospital facilities can make the difference between whether cattle recover and return to the home pen or whether they do not.
Good design is not just about convenience. It is about animal well-being and comfort, operational efficiency and crew safety.
It is also how we move the needle on the metrics that matter.
Pen space provided, cattle comfort measurements, case fatality rate and treatment-to-death interval are the primary benchmarks.
Medicine cost trends often track with morbidity and mortality.
Those numbers improve when design helps people handle cattle correctly and keep the environment clean.
One of the first things to think about is cattle flow and operational efficiency.
Individual sick or morbid cattle need to move calmly and efficiently from their home pen to the hospital system and into recovery pens or back to their home pens.
That starts before a gate ever swings. A seamless facility design optimizes flow, provides efficiency and protects the cattle and the handlers.
Every yard is slightly different so an in-depth understanding of the feedlot and their operation takes primary evaluation.
Many start with an idea of where they think they want the hospital to be without giving a lot of thought to the above-mentioned movement efficiencies.
Once a site plan is agreed upon, we then start with the hospital design layout.
Many facilities today have a system of treat and return policies with the goal of pulling an individual animal and getting them back to their home pen within two hours of being removed from their home pen.
In this case, if drover alleys are available in the yard, we can set up simple treatment options in those alleys for cattle with a head catch, individual alley, weigh platform scale and method of recording.
This is a more mobile or ambulatory system where we bring the medication to the individual alley.
The advantage of this system is that animal health technicians that are checking the cattle do not have to trail the cattle long distances for treatments to be applied.
Once treatments are applied, the animals are already in the zones of pens where they originated and can be returned to their home pen by the pen evaluation team or by the medics that are applying the treatment.
If there are animals that require longer recovery, these animals can be loaded in a trailer or trailed to a more central hospital.
The disadvantage of this type of facility is that we have to have a mobile medic and it too requires added communication between pen evaluators and the medics applying treatment.
The design of this system is Figure 1.
The more standard hospital system in today’s feedlots requires pen evaluators to bring their individual sick or lame animals to the hospital either via trailing them or loading them in a trailer and delivering them to the hospital.
Once delivered, I like to design facilities today that limit sorting of animals and maintain the block or zone of the yard they arrived from.
This is keeping in mind that we are going to return some animals that same day or within 2 to 3 days post treatment.
Therefore, the alleys or pens the cattle arrive in should have staging pens with water, shade, bedding and hay that the cattle can consume prior to treatment if needed.
The staging pens are designed around the population of pulls that come from those zones on a daily basis.
Typically, we provide around 25 to 30 sq ft of space for the animals in these staging pens prior to coming into the hospital.
The alley from these staging pens to the hospital facility should be around 10 to 12 foot wide.
Most individual hospital cattle will be handled on foot and not by horse or other means of moving the cattle.
Wider alleys provide safety issues for the handler.
The alley should lead to either a Bud-Box or a Bud-Tub, with BudTub being my preferred design choice whenever possible.
Facilities should be a combination of open fencing with semi-solid swinging gates, which allow crews to move cattle forward in a swim-like fashion to the Bud-Tub without the use of additional prods.
The less we fight cattle on the way in, the better our outcomes for the animal and handler.
Cattle are unpredictable, which is why I strongly encourage pass through gates to allow handlers easy access in and out of the alley.
Once cattle enter the Bud-Tub, they voluntarily travel down a straight, adjustable alley that is also open on the sides to the chute
where treatments can be applied.
The preferred chute will be recessed in the concrete so that there is no elevated step for the cattle to make to come into the chute or leave the chute.
Today, I design a sediment capture under the chute with stationary scales so weight can also be captured. In the lead-up alley to the BudTub, in the tub itself, in the alley and directly after the cattle leave the chute, I like the flooring to be rubber mats.
There are mats from several companies, and I recommend people call me for further consultation on this in the future.
NuMat (figure 2) is a new company in the US, and I really like the texture and look of the rubber mat, and I think they will hold up well to feedlot conditions.
The chute area is another critical design point because it is where medicine meets management.
Today we have cattle weighing 1500 to 1800 lbs, and having a chute that can easily handle these animals is imperative.
Some chutes today make it difficult to handle cattle of this size.
Daniels Manufacturing and Arrowquip are two companies that have built their chutes to accommodate the current size of cattle.
With the size of cattle, we are also seeing more and more foot health or musculoskeletal issues in yards.
It used to be respiratory was our biggest challenge and it is true that it still is.
However, musculoskeletal issues are rising and having the proper chute to deal with these issues is also important.
Having a chute that also tilts so that feet can be easily looked at and treated is something we are designing today.
Chute manufacturers are looking at ways of accommodating this by redesigning or adding methods to lift feet easier and safer for the animal health technician.
Recently, I have worked with companies like Appleton Steel in Appleton, Wisconsin, to design something that feedlots can work with better.
Arrowquip is another company that is working to address this.
Silencer has a chute that will tilt, as do Brute and other companies.
If you have questions on this, please feel free to call. Ensuring that a scale is in place to weigh all cattle for treatment is necessary.
Guessing weight is costly. Underdosing lowers success while overdosing wastes product.
A built-in scale also becomes a metric for evaluating recovery.
Animals that are holding and not losing weight or gaining weight post treatment is a good sign.
Weight loss signals the need to reevaluate our case to ensure we made the correct diagnosis or to provide additional therapy for the animal.
A hospital without proper record keeping is a poor hospital.
Having chute-side computers and recording methods is important, but we do not want the hospital technician to have to make foolish steps to record.
The more automated this can be for data capture, the better.
Use of RFID tags for individual animal care is a method that can be linked to a visual identification number on the lot tag.
Food safety and confidence in reporting is essential to maintaining this level of security in the beef industry.
Today’s systems can automatically capture identification, weight and temperature as well as where the animal arrived from in a single catch.
We can then enter manual lung scores for pneumonia severity, lameness scores for musculoskeletal injuries and severity to help further our assessment of treatment outcomes.
A hospital is only as good as its sanitation, and design decides how clean you can keep it.
Hospital facilities should be washed down daily.
Having proper sediment drains to capture manure is important and having enough water pressure to make this a seamless effort and lessen the time constraint of cleaning will ensure this is done daily.
If cleaning is difficult, it will not be done often enough.
In staging pens and alleys, having them wide enough with concrete stem walls of 1 to 1.5 ft can aid skid loaders in cleaning and making the job simpler so manure can be pushed to sediment capture facilities to ensure all manure is captured from an environmental component.
Ensuring that we have an equipment room for storage and cleaning is also important.
We need to have an area where esophageal tubes for bloats, thermometers, hoof tools, etc. can be cleaned and disinfected daily.
Good layout makes cleaning routine rather than optional, and those habits improve hospital recovery systems and metrics.
The hospital pens themselves are your intensive care unit.
Provide cattle at least the same square footage they had at home with adequate bunk space and constant access to water.
The best feed in the yard belongs in the hospital. Sometimes a flake of high-quality hay is the best probiotic to restart rumen function.
Shade is not optional. Shade and shelter with good ventilation is imperative to recovery of sick or morbid animals.
Cattle need areas of comfort to rest and recover if needed. In many hospitals pens today, this is lacking.
Despite the current cost of the animal, it is more important that animal well-being and comfort takes center stage for these animals.
Shade should be provided for the cattle at a minimum of 20 sq ft per animal in the pen.
Today, I would concrete the entire hospital pen and ensure bedding is laid down in those pens for comfort and rest.
Mud should never be an issue in a new or remodeled facility. Pens should also allow ration consistency.
Keeping cattle on the same diet supports gut health and speeds recovery.
An adjacent overflow pen prevents crowding during high treatment times which otherwise creates treatment setbacks.
What makes a hospital system effective is attention to detail.
Every element from how a gate latches to where the hose bib is located to the height of a man gate affects handling, sanitation and communication.
When design makes handling easier, crews do a better job. When cleaning is simple, facilities stay clean.
When cattle have space, shade, footing, comfort and ration consistency, they improve their chances of recovery and key performance measures follow.
Hospital management is one of my passions because it is where outcomes are determined and stewardship is visible.
A well-designed facility helps us handle cattle calmly, diagnose accurately and treat effectively.
It protects people, respects the cattle and protects your investment. Done correctly, hospital pens are not simply a place to hold sick cattle.
They are where we give animals the best chance to recover and return to the home pen while keeping case fatality and treatment-to-death intervals in check and medicine dollars working where they should.
We need to remember that medicine is a tool to help aid in the recovery of sick animals.
The animal needs to heal themselves just like you and me.
What aids most in recovery is the timing of identification of the symptoms of that sick animal, the handling and timing in which the animal is brought to the hospital, the care and accuracy in our diagnosis and treatment decisions, and most importantly, the rest, nutrition, hydration and comfort the animal receives while in the hospital facility.
If you are thinking about a new design, feel free to contact me via phone, text or email and I will be happy to go over what ideas I can offer you and how I can assist in your design or remodel of your facilities.
Dr. Kip Lukasiewicz received his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree in 1999 from Kansas State University. He is the owner of Sandhills Cattle Consultants, Inc. and a partner with Production Animal Consultation, LLC. Dr. Kip’s primary focus is feedlot consulting, animal handling, and facility design. Dr. Kip trained under the late Bud Williams and has worked and trained extensively with Dr. Tom Noffsinger utilizing Bud’s thoughts on low-stress cattle handling and caregiving. Dr. Kip along with Dr. Tom works and trains with over 20% of the US fed cattle industry and also travels to Canada training feedlot clients on low-stress cattle handling and caregiving. Dr. Kip resides in Farwell, Nebraska, with his wife, and they have two children. He is an active member of the Academy of Veterinary Consultants, Nebraska Veterinary Medical Association, and American Association of Bovine Practitioners.
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