Cost of wood corral

[snoopdog]

Portable panels. No question. Can be moved and sold in the future for nearly what you paid originally. Wood is no cheaper here and I live 15 miles from a major sawmill.

Our cows get their heads under the bottom and push right under, so we can’t use those. Clever little Irish cows.

Push in some T-posts and wire tie them to the panels. Puts a stop to that BS. I personally won't put up with fence/corral crawlers.

Chain or cable them together, top and bottom.

[JMJ Farms]

Portable panels. No question. Can be moved and sold in the future for nearly what you paid originally. Wood is no cheaper here and I live 15 miles from a major sawmill.

Our cows get their heads under the bottom and push right under, so we can’t use those. Clever little Irish cows.

Find you some heavy duty panels. The ones we are using now are first class. Never even had one bent and between my two neighbors and myself we run 350-400 head of momma cows through them at least twice a year. Easy to move. Heavy, but easy. $100/ea if you buy 25 at the time. I will try to find a picture.

[Little Cow]

Portable panels. No question. Can be moved and sold in the future for nearly what you paid originally. Wood is no cheaper here and I live 15 miles from a major sawmill.

Our cows get their heads under the bottom and push right under, so we can’t use those. Clever little Irish cows.

Find you some heavy duty panels. The ones we are using now are first class. Never even had one bent and between my two neighbors and myself we run 350-400 head of momma cows through them at least twice a year. Easy to move. Heavy, but easy. $100/ea if you buy 25 at the time. I will try to find a picture.

That's a good idea, but out of our budget level. When we built a corral here, I priced out several options and wood, or wood and cattle panel mixed, was cheaper.

I've seen people use a few rows of old highway guard rails for lanes into their chute. That looked really secure.

[JMJ Farms]

Our cows get their heads under the bottom and push right under, so we can’t use those. Clever little Irish cows.

Find you some heavy duty panels. The ones we are using now are first class. Never even had one bent and between my two neighbors and myself we run 350-400 head of momma cows through them at least twice a year. Easy to move. Heavy, but easy. $100/ea if you buy 25 at the time. I will try to find a picture.

That's a good idea, but out of our budget level. When we built a corral here, I priced out several options and wood, or wood and cattle panel mixed, was cheaper.

I've seen people use a few rows of old highway guard rails for lanes into their chute. That looked really secure.

I’ve got a working pen built out of guardrail. Very strong. Hard to climb in a hurry! But very strong. As for the heavy duty portable panels, I’m all about saving a dollar. I figured it 6 ways to Sunday and the portable panels were the cheapest option for me. I’ve got hundreds of welded wire panels. Even though I already have them the portable were cheaper. The 2x6s, posts, and fasteners were gonna be the same amount. Plus the labor. I can build a pen with the portable panels in an hour that would take a week to build outta wood. BUT, it’s like everything else in the cow business, every situation is different. It depends on what you have available and how much time you have and whether you’re gonna move it.

[Bigfoot]

I had to add about 8000 square feet to mine, and I had to economize. I used 8' pressure treated post (concreted the post haven't leaned yet) set 2' 6" in the ground, with 5'6" out. Sat the post 6' apart, with 4 2" x 6" x 12' pressure treated boards. Ran two strands of barbed wire in the gaps of the boards. Seems to keep them from sticking their head through. it cost about $4 a foot to build. Probably important to say, I don't crowd them in this area. Area where they are worked/loaded is very close to 7' tall, and 2" x 8" boards. It was also expensive to build.

Never been a huge fan of wire panels, but I have a few. I'd be much more inclined to make two passes with woven wire, nailed to wood post than I would be to use panels. Had an arena made that way for years, and it held up pretty well.

[Silver]

This is the style we use. We just push a steel post where the panels meet for pressure areas. Lots of ads on the classifieds for $280 CAD each.

[Till-Hill]

Free standing panels are the only way to go, IMHO. I try to collect a few more every year. Like Aaron said, they really don't depreciate.

Free standing panels, then buy your self a couple loops and gates to make an alleyway. I bought strong hold loops or A-Frames they call them and made few more to match the corral gates I already had too. Works awesome.

[5S Cattle]

This is the style we use. We just push a steel post where the panels meet for pressure areas. Lots of ads on the classifieds for $280 CAD each.

Those are on my short list. Can’t decide if I want to buy, or build.

[Jeanne - Simme Valley]

Silver - never saw any like that.

[Brookhill Angus]

Right now I have a REALLY crappy corral, BR and TT saw it, it's laughable at best. Old rusted gates held together with baling twine. That's about to change soon. Not because it doesn't work, it has worked beautifully for many years, in fact, I put the corral up in about an hour one morning in 2015 and it's been there ever since. My cattle are gentle so I rarely have an incident.

However with that said, I despise how it looks, it's depressing, it looks like a rusted pile of crap. Therefore this fall when things cool down, I'm going to use rough cut oak, along with large end posts, and build something to be proud of, possibly with a catwalk around the outer edges, I've seen that in some photos online and it looks great.



I really like how a well built wooden corral looks even if it's old school.

[skyhightree1]

Right now I have a REALLY crappy corral, BR and TT saw it, it's laughable at best. Old rusted gates held together with baling twine. That's about to change soon. Not because it doesn't work, it has worked beautifully for many years, in fact, I put the corral up in about an hour one morning in 2015 and it's been there ever since. My cattle are gentle so I rarely have an incident.

However with that said, I despise how it looks, it's depressing, it looks like a rusted pile of crap. Therefore this fall when things cool down, I'm going to use rough cut oak, along with large end posts, and build something to be proud of, possibly with a catwalk around the outer edges, I've seen that in some photos online and it looks great.



I really like how a well built wooden corral looks even if it's old school.

I am redoing mine this year too but my neighbor has best one ive seen made out of guardrails

[Boot Jack Bulls]

I have close to the ideal set-up for my bull program. I am lucky in that before we bought the farm, my family spent time an resources to build an great system. I have two large lots and one small one that are guard rail on 4x4 posts. These work excellent for young stock or anyone that needs quarantine without any chance of escape lol! My working pens and alleys outside our barn are square tube stock panels hung on railroad ties. The pens and alley in our barn are 3x6 rough sawn oak on 6x6 posts, all set in the concrete floor. We made sure all working pens and alleys have plenty of gates and swing gates (all heavy duty Sioux brand), so one person can move stock safely and easily.

[snoopdog]

We should really have a seperate forum for corrals and working pens. This comes up so often, and has been requested before. How about it? I love to see the pens and corrals. I used to make a game of it , trucking, even at hiway speeds, I get good ideas. We started with steers, got stuck with a bunch of heifers, market tanked, had to calve them to make a thin dime. So then we had momma cows, and had to rework the corral system. I think this is typical.

[Aaron]

That's far too purty to run cows through and get plastered in cow crap.

[Little Cow]

I use cattle panels here and there, but right now, our corral is wood with barbed wire in between and no climb inside the stall. When we lock them up in the corral, we can throw hay over a wall from inside the barn.

I'll get some pictures later.