We've down it both ways, unless there is a side that you would never move, next to the house or drivway, I would go 100% with corral panels. If the cows are loony it isn't such a good idea, but for normal cattle it's sruprising how well the work and hold up. We use heavy weight T-posts at the points that the meet with a chain around the post and the corral with a dog snap connecting the ends of the chain. If something needs to be changed around, just pull the post and move it.
The layout depends on your actual working equipment, i.e. sweep, chute, headgate, whatever. Ours works best with one large gathering pen, and on the end a couple of 12' wide smaller chatch pens with 12' bow gates to close them off. then a swee and an alleyway that goes to the chute. We gatther everything into the large catch pen then just run a few head at a time into the smaller pens. From the chute they go out into an open area next to the large catch pen. When the catch pen is empty we just open a gate and they can go back into the catchpen. The alleyway is made up of portable corral panels and to load the trailer we run them the same way but swing one panel in to close of the rest of the alleyway and they get routed straight into the trailer.
The beuaty of panels is that when you wont need the the working pens you can use the panels to set up water points so that they have to pass through them to reach water/minerals and go under a fly wiper mop.
As you can afford it you can add more panels and not have to move the main ones anymore, but it sure helps to spread the expenses over time.
dun
Oldtimer":as58c2fx said:
I'm starting to believe that portable panels are the way to go- nothings cheap anymore- but the heavy metal panels outlast the wood corrals and its sure nice when you have to clean corrals- just pull up the panels and you have room to work. Also gives you the ability to alter pen and corral sizes and designs as things change.