We know all too well that cows prefer to spend more than half of their day resting in a lying position. This improves not just cow comfort, but also productivity. For that reason, a farm’s ability to provide adequate, comfortable stalls is critical.

According to the Dairyland Initiative’s Nigel Cook, the perfect freestall allows cows to stand in a similar way to they would on an open pasture. When a cow shifts her weight to stand, her body lunges forward nearly 2 feet, and her head moves first down and then up.

Cook described these two motions as lunge (horizontal movement) and bob (vertical movements).

With these guidelines in mind, Cook suggested building freestalls that meet the cows’ requirements for free movement and standing.

“There's a relationship within these dimensions, so it isn’t simply making the stalls wider. You can't fix just one thing without fixing everything else,” Cook explained in a recent “Dairyland Initiative Podcast.”

“We must address the dimensions and location of the brisket locator, the neck rail, and all these things. This whole stall functions as a single unit. If you change one thing, you impact another thing,” he warned.

He specifically shared the stall dimensions in the table below as recommendations for new builds and remodels.

When ideal can’t be met

While we’d all like to build or remodel stalls, often we find ourselves working with what is available. This brings up the discussion of how we can prevent cows from lying diagonally in stalls and compromising cleanliness.

“Give the cows the 10 feet that they need to front lunge, and what we noticed was that the cows laid much straighter in the stalls because they could lunge to the front, and they tend to lie in that direction,” Cook.

Specifically, Cook shared that lunge space takes precedence over bob space for cows. They need that lunge space and can deal with some obstructions to their bob space. That being said, Cook shared that farms can do a great deal of good by simply removing obstructions in front of the cows. “The most common reasons cows lie diagonally is not stall width; it's obstructions in front of the stall,” Cook detailed.

Therefore, he suggested attentiveness to the location of any rails, fences, walls, or other obstructions in front of stalls. Cook recommended using creativity to find new ways to help eliminate these obstacles and encourage straighter lying while in the stall.