In a cattle feedlot in KS how may cattle can be penned in one pen?

Feedlots mostly have yearling finisher cattle, so lets start with the space requirements for them, which is 125-200 ft2 per animal for most cattle. So if you have a 5000 ft2 feedlot pen, the most you could fill it is with 25 - 40 cattle. However most pens are larger than 5000 ft2, but this rule of thumb is what most managers go by.

However, if this same 5000 ft2 pen had mature cows instead, it would be 300 ft2 per cow. So that means that that pen could hold plus or minus 16 cows.

Now here we haven't taken into account the soil and climatic conditions, so these numbers may vary with these type of conditions. Also, the above area numbers are for the dirt lots, not for paved lots. If a particular area was paved, the area per animal is significantly reduced. Examples:

- Cows have 50-100 ft2 per cow. Thus a 5000 ft2 lot could hold 50-100 cows.

- Yearlings have 30-50 ft2 per animal. Thus a 5000 ft2 lot could hold around 100 to 165+ yearlings.