Now that the bison watering system is in place and the herd is growing, I will need to develop a handling system (i.e. corral) to safely deal with the herd. I don't plan on having to use it often, but a corral is an important tool.
So far the corral project has largely remained in the planning and design phase, which is an important part of building a corral. One major constraint on the design is that I want the corral to be portable. In my opinion having a portable bison handling system keeps avenues open for future land leasing, additional purchases of non-adjoining properties, or even moving the entire operation somewhere else.
I have looked into ready-made portable bison handling systems. Many of these appear to be very well built and would work. However, they are also
very expensive and, frankly, it's just not my style to buy something when I could easily make it myself.
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| The bison handling system as it was initially conceived. Gates would be added to this design. Credit for the 3D bison, pearson squeeze chute, and steel tube, which were downloaded from 3DWarehouse, go to 'celdridge,' 'hereford,' and 'Lee C.' respectively. |
My initial plan for a corral was to use a combination of semi-permanent posts and interlocking panels. These panels, 12 feet long and 6 feet tall, could be moved via a tractor with a fork attachment and stacked on a flatbed trailer for transportation.
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| The 12 foot long panel as it was designed in Google SketchUp |
Once the panel was designed, a prototype was created using 82 feet of 2.5"x2.5" 11 Gauge steel tube. While sturdy, this giant ended up weighing over 385 pounds and used $225.50 worth of steel per panel.
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| The second prototype. |
Wanting to reduce weight and cost I next created a second prototype using the same design but with 2"x2" 16 gauge steel tube. This panel weighed only 140 pounds and cost $106.60. It's strength is still quite good.
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| The rotatable steel form. |
At this point the project had to be delayed while I waited for other factors to develop. Specifically, I wanted to acquire a trailer large enough to hold the panels and a way to move my welding capabilities from my urban home in northern Virginia to my rural ranch in southern Virginia. During this delay period I did manage to create plans for a rotatable steel form designed to hold all of the panel components in place while they were welded together.
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| The 24 foot long free-standing corral panel. |
Early this year, after I had acquired a large flatbed trailer and was able to move the welding equipment to the ranch, I began to rethink the panel design. I didn't like the way the panels would fit together and having them only 12 feet long made for an awful lot of panels to unload and position with the tractor. The resulting revision to this panel is what's known as a free-standing corral panel. This 24 foot long panel stands 6 feet high on detachable feet and is linked to other free-standing panels using chains with chain gussets. As it is currently designed each panel will consume 166 feet of 2"x2" steel tube and 22 feet of 2.5"x2.5" at a total weight of 350 lbs and cost of around $280. As with the previous panel designs, I plan to build a prototype before going into larger scale production.
The resulting corral of free-standing panels would look something like the above graphic.
I will continue to post updates as this project progresses.
