Talk:Cattle grid

I bvelieve that Texas gate should be merged into this section. Are they not synonyms? They even share a picture! Sim 16:50, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Railway rails?

Many of these that I have seen ( in New Zealand) are built using railway rails. I'm not sure if this is common enough to mention? - SimonLyall (talk) 03:37, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

In the USA, they use somewhat lighter steel and pipe as a rule, but some here might be build with old rail scrap. Probably the bottom line is that people scavenge whatever is cheap in a given area. Maybe some photos? Montanabw^(talk) 20:01, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Photos are definitely not used as cattle guards even if they are the cheapest material in a given area. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.98.29.126 (talk) 23:23, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Patent

Added patent information and references back in section with Standards. This helps to date technological improvements and the current status of regulation.SBaker43 (talk) 06:42, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

That worked. I tossed the quote box because it didn't make a lot of sense being placed out of context, but the purpose of the patent could easily be added to the article text if that source was where you got the quote. Montanabw^(talk) 17:45, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Related term: cattle crossing

Maybe this should be discussed as the inverse – a controlled point for cattle to cross a road. It appears a few times on Wikipedia, e.g. Preston, Texas and Road signs in Sri Lanka but is never defined. Here is a source for U.S. road sign usage:

• Modley, Rudolf; Myers, William R. (1976), Handbook of Pictorial Symbols: 3,250 Examples from International Sources, Dover, p. 135

- Brianhe (talk) 02:02, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

• Where I live, "cattle crossing" signs are pretty random and not controlled at all, more of a "watch out for cows on the road" thing. Montanabw^(talk) 05:03, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

Book-length work

My copy of The Cattle Guard: Its History and Lore by James F. Hoy arrived in the mail today. I've been out-of-town for three days, but sometime soon I'll delve into the book to see what might be of use vis-a-vis this article. Finetooth (talk) 00:03, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

Excellent! When you use it, be sure to cite to precise page numbers. By the way, I don't think we need more photos, but if we do, there's a cattle guard about 500 yards from my house and I could take photographs of any detail required upon request. I can also drive about 10 miles to shoot photos of one that is at the entrance to a freeway on-ramp. Life in Montana... Montanabw^(talk) 18:03, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

Page numbers, yes, always. Looks like we have lots of good photos already, but if you have one that is better, why not? Finetooth (talk) 20:19, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

Morphic resonance

I don't think morphic resonance should be discussed flatly alongside traditional learning theory, without mentioning that it is a non-scientific explanation. Brianhe (talk) 23:30, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

I agree. If we keep it at all, it should probably be moved to the end of the list of possible explanations for the efficacy of virtual cattle guards and should be identified as an outlier. I also wonder if Sheldrake's web site qualifies as a reliable source. Finetooth (talk) 16:39, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

I am all for improving the sourcing, but I wasn't having much luck finding anything, what's there was the best I could find, though I didn't drill clear down to bedrock or try Google scholar. If anyone can find any university research on the topic, that would be dandy, but this isn't exactly a field where there are big bucks for peer-reviewed studies (though highway safety might be another place to look. Montanabw^(talk) 05:23, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

It's actually OK now since Finetooth's last comb-through [1]. - Brianhe (talk) 09:06, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

I haven't tried Google Scholar either. Agricultural economics departments and extension services may have things, hand-outs or plans like the one I cited with the do-it-yourself schematics. We could interview some cows, but that would involve personal research. :-)

Extension service stuff is often very good. And yes, I did talk to my neighbor's cows, but they had little to say other than "moo." No help there.  ;-) Montanabw^(talk) 20:45, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

Grid/guard terminology

This edit changed a bunch of "guard"s to "grid"s for "consistency". However I think it flies in the face of our own statement about regional usage. For instance shouldn't the captions on U.S. locations say "guard" which is the local term, e.g. Typical design of a cattle guard in the American west? And in prose shouldn't the local term be retained, e.g. traditional cattle guards in the Flint Hills of Kansas? I reverted the change to ask the other editor to carefully consider these changes but was myself reverted. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:53, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

@Bri: I agree Bri, however, I think we should try keep consistency in the article and since the chosen term is cattle grid in this article, despite the fact that other countries name it differently as has been explained in the lead, we do not need to change the noun used to describe a cattle grid just because American west appears in the sentence. Per MOS:CONSISTENCY this should be done when announcing a US name like US Dept of Defense and UK Dept of Defence. I cannot see how this can relate to cattle grid and cattle guard since they are completely different phrases used and not simply two words where one drops like, Defence, to the easier, phonic spelling of Defense. Waddie96 (talk) 19:58, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

This article should be moved to “cattle guard” to conform with the given name of the invention and the name in most common use.

Before about 2006, “grid” was a rarely used regionalism. It's achieved more use since then, which I suspect might be driven solely by the existence of this article. Despite this, it remains the lesser-used term.(ngram data)

It appears that the majority of references in this article, including all of the print references, use “guard” as the primary term. I haven't looked at them all, but at first glance the references that use “grid” seem to lack authority. For example, judging from the linked Facebook profile, sheldrake.org seems to be the blog of a professional pet psychic.

In addition, the “also known as” information seems to be poorly sourced and incomplete. For example, the references prove “grid” is also used in (at least some parts of) the UK, and as a lifelong resident and traveler of the Northwestern US, I can assert that the unattributed claim that we say “Texas gate” is incorrect.

I have opinions about the sources that have been misquoted for the sake of consistency, but that may be a separate issue. Jonathan Price (talk) 01:16, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Passage Canadien

Known as 'passage Canadien' in France: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-texas-gate-cattle-guard-1.6703393 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.242.129.238 (talk) 14:38, 5 January 2023 (UTC)