Our Corral Setup

For those who are interested here is a tour through our corrals. This system is set up so that 2 people can easily handle a herd of cattle, and one can usually handle a small group or one single animal at calving time. It is all set up so that you can handle a nasty cow at calving without being in any pen with her if necessary. We generally don't have cattle like that, but it has come in handy at times.

We will start off with our calving and holding area. This is where the heavies go before they calve, and when we are working cattle this is where we hold groups of cattle if they have to be in overnight. They come up this hill, and into the corral.

Here you can see the alley leading down to the holding pen, the sorting pens on the sides and the alley going to the barn.

A view of the large sorting pen, alley to the barn and barn on the South side of the alley.
A view of the smaller sorting pens and chute on the North side. There are 3 pens for sorting into here.

Through the gate into the main holding pen.
The main holding pen, where we hold the cattle while we are working them. Right now as you can see it is divided into two and we are feeding some steers on the one side while the colt stays on the other.

The alley into the barn and the large sorting pen on the south side
One of the sorting pens on the north side. The Chute faces into this pen, and there is a small pen on the north side of the chute that leads to the pasture.

The small pen on the North side. The loading chute is on the far end, and the gate on squeeze can be opened to let cattle out into this small pen.

Looking out on the pasture to the North. A large pen for holding animals or wintering them. This runs along the North side of our sorting pens, and is accessed through the gate next to the Loading Chute.

Now back to the Squeeze Chute. This is the business end as you can tell. It faces into the West. If necessary, we can sort cattle 3 ways out of the squeeze.
This is the funnel end of the chute. There is a gate that can be swung so cattle can continue straight down to the loading chute and onto a cattle liner, or so that they are forced to turn and go on into the squeeze chute.