Reducing bison stress with sheeted corral panels


 
When bison are corralled in a relatively large pen and under low stress situations the pen can consist of panels with open spaces between panel rails without too many problems.  However, in situations in which bison may experience greater stress, such as in smaller pens, chutes, and alleyways, their ability to reason breaks down and they can easily become overstimulated.  Over-stimulation of the senses results in a fight or flight response which is VERY dangerous for both the bison and people handling the bison.  Consequently, to reduce the a amount of visual stimulation in higher stress areas of the corral, I've added 1/16th inch thick sheets of steel to several of my 24-foot-long corral panels.  The following photographs show these panels.
A sheeted panel.  The sheets are welded to the panel with one-inch-long welds every foot or two. 

Even though the sheet is only 1/16th inch thick the 96 square feet needed to cover the panel adds around 240lbs to the 320lbs of the original panel.  To compensate for this increased weight diagonal braces were added to the feet of each panel.
I am now about 1/3 done building all of the corral components.  The remaining components will include two heavy ally panels, four gated panels, two 10-foot-long gates, nine six-foot-long gates, and 22 hinges.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Front-end loader mounted t-post installer

Image
 Since we started fencing the perimeter of our ranch in 2014, I've strove to increase the rate at which I am able to fence an area.  Among the most recent improvements has been a t-post pusher which is mounted to our tractor's front-end loader bucket.  This device is very simple, but has already saved us countless hours of work. The following photographs illustrate how I use the post pusher.  Aiming: The loader is first positioned with the end of the pusher is close to the ground.  I then maneuver the tractor until the end of the pusher is in alignment with the marked post location.  This is how the lined up pusher looks from the driver's seat of the tractor.  Yes, I know the loader has an issue with the hydraulics cover. Loading:  Once the pusher is aligned, I place the tractor in park, raise the loader arm and insert a t-post into the open end of the pusher.  Tilting:  Correct placement of the t-post is dependent aligning the post along three axises,
Read more

DIY cultipacker-roller

Image
For those of you who are unfamiliar with agricultural equipment, a cultipacker is an implement used to compress soil.  There are several reasons a farmer may use a cultipacker, but, for me, the primary purpose for the cultipacker is to pack down soil that has just been planted with grass seed.  This should greatly improve seed germination in newly planted bison pasture. Five truck tire rims welded together form the shape of the cultipacker.  Technically this is really more of a cultipacker-roller hybrid as the ridged portions on the roller should be more closely spaced on a true cultipacker.  A thick piece of steel tube runs through the center of the rims, which I'll explain later in this post. For added weight each tire rim was filled with concrete after it was welded in place.  A photograph of the roller portion of the cultipacker completed and waiting for the concrete to cure.  The length of steel tube that runs through the center of the roller is welded to the
Read more

Face fly nightmare

Image
Face flies beginning to appear a few days after my initial treatment with AiM-L VetCaps.  I unfortunately don't have any photos of the original mob of flies, which was much worse. Since the forth of July an insect called the face fly ( Musca autumnalis ) has plagued our ranch and caused me a considerable amount of stress.  It was a week ago, on the forth, while doing a routine check on the herd, that I noticed that the bison appeared to be greatly agitated by a surprisingly high number of the flies.  While the sight of flies or other small insects buzzing around grazing animals is nothing unusual, this was something different.  The flies flocked in groups around the eyes and nose of each animal so incessantly that the bisons' natural defenses appeared to be ineffective.  All the blinking, ear flapping, tail wagging, snorting, rolling in soil, and rubbing on trees had little effect.  No matter how many times they did these things the flies would just briefly fly up into the
Read more