Brickhouse Station

In 2020, Thompson Longhorn supplied cattle equipment to Harvest Road Beef during the redevelopment of yard infrastructure at Brickhouse Station, in Gascoyne, WA. After drought-breaking rains, the 225,000ha station functions as the backgrounding property for cattle before they are transferred to finishing properties in southern Western Australia.

The yards include horse entrance through curved bugle leading into the pen prior to a 360-degree manual crowding yard. The crowd is fully sheeted to prevent cattle baulking from external distractions and is always supplied with an operator’s catwalk. The design ensures the safety of both the animals and the handlers, reduces the stress on the livestock and increases efficiency.

From the crowd leads a waiting bay with side opening for cattle exit through to into a straight lane and up a single deck loading ramp or continue forward into a vee profile curved lane which accommodates various sizes of livestock as the angel of v slope accommodates from young livestock to large animals due to the space at the base of the lane. This also helps prevent cattle from turning their bodies around in a lane as they can’t cross their legs over one another to turn sideways, thus preventing turn arounds in a lane.

The chosen restrainer for this set of yards is a Monarch MKII, as it gives operators the ability to operate the pneumatic functions with ease and remotely using a handheld control. This allows the key operator to move efficiently around the processing area and operate slides, gates and the draft remotely while they are carrying out other tasks, which is time-efficient and less labour intensive.

A 6-way drafter allocates livestock to pens when exciting the restrainer. This was important for the yard operators as there are a wide variety of cattle that have to be sorted when processing, this creates a time-efficient sorting process for when sorting breeders, different lines of cattle and sorting decks for sale. A pneumatic operated drafting unit can be automated by integration with herd management software to selectively separate animals based on pre-determined criteria.

The waiting bay which comes off the crowding yard attaches to a side access gate that leads into a straight lane that funnels cattle up to a single deck ramp. This client did not require a double-deck loading due to the station regularly using a single deck body truck to transport cattle, in addition to having time during load-outs that faster turn around with loading bottom and top deck simultaneously. A dump ramp on the driver’s side allows for efficient unloading of cattle in a medium pen.