Livestock Equipment
15' Shelter Gate with Swing-Up Creep Gate
A custom 15-foot gate for a calving shelter with a built-in swing-up creep gate, so calves can get in out of the weather while the whole bay still opens for the skid steer.
MATERIALS / Steel pipe and tube gate frame, custom creep gate section, fabricated gate support bracket, chain latches
During calving season this shelter needs to do two things at once: let calves in to get out of a winter storm, and keep the cows out. Before, that meant creep panels wired across the opening. They worked, but every time the shelter needed bedding or cleaning someone had to cut the wire, drag the panels out of the way, and wire it all back up. The fix was a single 15-foot gate built to the bay opening, with a swing-up creep gate built into the lower section. With the creep gate raised and latched, calves walk under it and into the shelter while the cows stay out. Drop it and the gate is solid. To bed or clean, the whole gate swings open and the skid steer drives straight in. No wire, no panels to move. A gate this long puts a lot of load on the hinges and the post over a winter. To keep it from sagging, we fabricated a support cradle that bolts to the post on the latch side. When the gate is closed it rests in the cradle, so the weight sits on the bracket instead of hanging off the hinges and the building. The creep gate was sized for the space and the calves, and the whole gate was built to the exact bay opening. Gates like this can be built to any width, with a creep section sized to your calves and hardware to match your posts.