Building a corral, part 2

A few days ago I wrote that I was starting to build a corral to allow me to manage the animals in my herd more efficiently.   Today I was doing sanity tests to make sure that it would work with the various types of animals that I have.   There are differences in pen designs for different species of animals. 

Click on the image for a bigger version. 
Holding area 1 is 16' wide by 60' long.  holding area 2 is roughly 20x30, holding area 3 is 30x25.  the crowding gate feeds into a chute which has a side passage for a scale or squeeze chute.  Most of the time you'll just use the straight shot into the loading dock, but other times you'll direct them into the scale/squeeze area for work or to weigh them. 

I want to be able to use this facility for animals I've just recently purchased at auction, for the management of my herd, and to load animals for market.  The scale is so that I can show customers the animals weight, and verify what the conversion ratio is between live weight at the farm and hanging weight at the cutting facility.
There's a gate (not shown) between the chute and holding area 2, so that I can run animals through the chute and either load them or put them back into holding, allowing me to sort through my herd by weight, for instance.

 This is the view into the chute area.  the crowding gate is on the left.  Where the panels are will be solid walls, and that piece of plywood will be the gate that directs animals into the scale area, behind the white board on the right. 

I put this up so that I could run sows and cows through the setup.  I wanted to make sure that they wouldn't balk and would flow nicely through the setup before I went further.  Much easier to rework at this stage than later. 

This is the crowding gate at full-crowd -- covering the end of the chute to the scale area.  the view to the left of the white board is the scale area.  I ran a pig and a cow through this a few times to make sure that they'd go in without trouble.  It worked. 

There's enough space to allow a good sightline, so that the animals going through can see the Temple Grandin recommended 3 body lengths  The picture above is from the scale area back into the crowding gate area. 

Sanity tests complete, animals move in and out of the skeleton corral correctly.   Next step is to construct the radius turn into the loading dock and then corral railings.

Building a corral, part 4 of 5, gates

The first gate completed is the gate that routes cows from the corral into the loading ramp. This view is with the gate in the "loading ramp" position. The loading ramp will be to the left when it's completed.

This is the view with the gate in the "chute" position. We're looking at the blocking gate about 10' down the chute. This blocking gate was based on plan 1814.

This is the view with the blocking gate open. You can see it to the right through the corral rails.

This blocking gate was actually one of the most expensive to construct. The rolling hinge and track that it runs on cost $85. Counting the cost of lumber, labor and hinge, this gate cost $125 to construct. It slides into a slot between four 4x4 posts. We'll install two of them in the finished corral.

This is the view of the hinge and rail that the door operates on. It's angled so that the door naturally slides shut. You operate it from the catwalk inside by sliding it back and forth, or from the outside of the corral by a string and pulley that haven't been installed in this picture. You can see the loop that the string will attach to if you look closely at the top of the door just to the left of the leftmost post.

These are the two access gates. The one on the left opens into the squeeze chute area -- the goal of that one is to allow us to clear a cow from the chute to get to the one we want to work on. So it opens into the main corral. The second is a man gate to allow folks inside the corral to exit it to the squeeze chute area. They're built to blend in with the fence so that they aren't obvious targets for a curious steer.
Access gate closed, chute gate open. There will be another blocking gate just outside the end of the chute, just in front of where the squeeze chute will install.
This is the start of the framing for the catwalk. The verticals are scraps from the fence rail, nailed to the posts and then trimmed to allow a 2x6 to be laid across. The catwalk will be topped with scraps from the rails that are nailed both to the 2x6 and to the fence rail. The goal of this catwalk is to allow someone to work down the chute encouraging the cattle to move into the loading ramp or down the path to the squeeze chute. I've spaced the top boards 1" apart, and angled them about 1" down from level to allow the rain to keep them clean of mud and debris. This catwalk also makes a nice bench.

At this point we're at 5.5 man days of labor. I'll do a complete breakdown of the materials and costs in the final post.