The “Bud Box” is a simple, effective alternative to the older crowding tub. It has several advantages and a couple drawbacks. Here we’ll try to look thru the pluses and minuses of a bud box and hopefully give you something to think about when you’re designing up your next corral system .
First, lets look at what we’re trying to do. The heart of a corral system is the chute, but a chute can’t operate alone, it must be fed by an alley that gets cows single file. An alley has it’s own set of requirements, but we will look at those another day. One thing that all alleys do have in common is that you have to get the cattle to move from a comfortable space (the holding pen where they have a little room and lots of friends around) to a confined, and much less comfortable space where they are restricted in movement and view. Getting cattle to make this transition is often one of the most frustrating part of working cattle. If a system is poorly designed, the cattle can balk, or they can try to jump, crawl under, or just get into a bunch and spin around in circles, missing the entry to the alley.
The old fashioned way to get cows into an alley was to just make a “V” shape pen, put gates behind them, and push them. This works, but it’s probably the most dangerous for the people, most stressful for the cattle and most likely to cause problems.
In the 60’s it became common to use a forcing tub. This is a round pen with a gate that hingest at the center point. Some are well designed and use the cattle’s desire to turn around, but many are simply used like a meat presses to force cattle into a tighter and tighter space until they move into an alley.
The Bud Box was designed to use the natural instinct to turn around when trapped, combine it with flight zone control, and get the cattle to move into the alley opening without having to apply any physical force or yell at them. Simple body position of the man on foot or horse is enough.
The bud box has been around for a few decades now and some big advantages have emerged, as well as a few drawbacks.
Advantages
Lowers the stress of the cattle
cheap to construct, and flexible in design
simple, it’s just fence and gates.
Disadvantages:
A person is in close proximity with the cattle in a confined area.
Limited options to deal with stubborn cattle.
The first disadvantage is probably the biggest thing that people say they dislike about bud boxes, and its a real concern when you’re working with lots of unknown animals. If you have a crazy cow come after you in a bud box, you’re kind of up a creek! If this is a concern for you, there are somdesigns where you can work from outside the bud box, or have a protected area in the bud box.
The second disadvantage of having limited options for dealing with a stubborn cow also has some design options for dealing with. One option is to put a kind of forcing gate inside a traditional bud box. You want to make sure your not blocking your man gates, but it’s easy to accomplish. You want to be careful when doing this because it puts you in a positions where the cow could kick the gate while you’re holding it or standing right behind it, but it’s one option.
The other way to deal with this problem is to use a hybrid system. Several manufacturers build a hybrid bud box/tub system.
The Arrowquip Bud flow system is a good example. It’s a clever design that allows the use of the tub as a normal tub, or as a hybrid bud box/tub.
Brute Cattle equipment also has some good heavy duty hybrid systems. These look like very heavy duty systems and combined with long double alleys, allow a very high number of cattle to be worked.
Finally, my old family business of Plus One Manufacturing has built several hybrid bud box/tub systems that used a remote control hydraulic system to add further separation between the people and the confined cattle.
If you want to build a traditional style of bud box, here are a few things to keep in mind as you design it.
Sheeted bud box gate
Many bud box gates are sheeted, in addition, many people find that sheeting the whole bud box works better than leaving it open. There’s no right answer that I can say will work best for everyone the first time, so what I recommend that you do is to build it with just rails, but make them so that you can easily add the sheeting later if you want.
Man gates are an important part of the bud box design.
Make sure to put in man gates where you will be walking. This means beside the alley for sure,and often next to the bud box gate post. You want to plan out your path that you think you will take before you start welding. It’s cheap to put in a gate at the planning stage!
consider extra gates in the bud box
You can also consider putting in extra gates in your bud box. A Forcing gate gives you an option to move stubborn cows into the alley, but you want to be careful because she can kick or turn back on you, so use it with caution. Another good place to put a gate is the end of the bud box. This gives you a way to clean out easier, to get in with a skidsteer to remove a downer, or just to have access to the alley rather than driving thru the rest of the corral.
As far as the size of a bud box goes, you actually have a little leeway. 10’ wide works for cows with a smaller flight zone, but gets a little crowded for regular beef cattle. 12’ up to 14’ is pretty normal for systems where you’re working on foot, and 14’ to 16’ can be used for systems worked from horseback.
The length should be around 30’, but if you can only go 20’, it can still work. Systems of up to 40 are used with high flight zone animals to give the operator time to move the gate, but this is not as common. If you do have a very long bud box, you might consider adding in 1 or 2 gates to shorten it up for when you’re just bringing up small groups of cows. It’s easy to make a 40’ shrink down to 28’ long with the addition of a gate 12’ in from the end.
The bottom line is that Bud Boxes are a very effective way to move cows into the alley. I highly recommend them and I think they can be adapted to almost any corral system. If you’re designing a set of corrals and need some help with visualization or design, send me a message, I’ll be happy to take a look at your project!