Does anyone have plans for a catch pen for two people to manage about 25 cattle. We want something that makes it easy to sort the cattle that need to be loaded for sale or into the head gate for vaccinations. Most plans we have seen are far too elaborate for a small operation.
cattle handling
- Thread starter MSFARM
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cattleluvr18
Well-known member
we have 25 feeder cattle that weigh about 450 pounds right now. we set up a pen that is 2 X 1 12' panels. for the chute part we have a portable one so we just move it down there and move the panels around to funnel into the chute. same with loading. to get a calf in there, usually five or six also go in there and then you just have to sort it off. i've done it by myself so two people could easily do it. im sure somebody else will have something better though.
MSFARM":3berm574 said:
Our set-up allows one person to handle up to 60 head of cattle. It is comprised of side by side alleys - the west alley has 2 interior gates that cuts it into 3 sectons. The north pen is probably 40' long(maybe 50' - I'm not sure), the other 2 pens are maybe 15' in length. There is another, smaller pen - probably 10' - that can be included by latching 2 gates back, or the gate to the far south pen can be used as a sorting gate to funnel the cattle into the south alley, which will hold probably 60 head of yearlings, or 40 head of mature cattle. The second alley has 1 interior gate that cuts it in half - both resulting pens are probably 20'. It also serves as the entry to the sweep tub to run the animals through the chute. We have 3 gates between the 2 alleyways and, by opening the appropriate gate for the number of cattle that are being worked, one person can easily do any sorting that needs to be done. All of our gates in all of the alleys are self-latching - they just need to be swung shut to catch and latch.
