Cattle panel

[10AcreChick]

I use CP for my tomatoes, too. Put two T-posts about 5 feet apart, and secured a 5 foot section of CP between them with zip ties, but put it about 2 feet up in the air (tomatoes don't need much support til then, anyway). So it makes it about 6 feet high. Worked great last season, just keep weaving tomato vines in and out of the CP every time you go check the garden! Used some strips of cloth to help anchor them to the CP, too. I would love to get my hands on many more CPs, but they are hard to come by for free around here!

 

[Blooie]

Guess I should show off my CP creation....many here have seen it but not all:



Just cattle panels wired to steel fence posts pounded into the ground.


Inside during early spring. Notice the chicks being brooded in a wire pen, there on the left. Run is still partially covered with plastic for winter protection.




Run the first summer we built it....before we expanded it by one panel. Lattice is just for looks. Landcape fabric unrolled over the top and then attached to strips so we could raise and lower sections like window shades.


Winter? No problem. Blizzards, snow load....it withstands it all and provides a roomy, dry place for them.

 

[GardenNut]

@Blooie, you didn't need a support down the top middle? I like the t posts too instead of building a frame on the ground for the panels. I'm getting two goats in the spring and hope to use these panels for a pen and a shelter.

 

[Blooie]

Nope, no frame under it or anywhere at the bottom either!! The only frame is the people door on the north side. The panels are just wired to the fence posts and the outside exerted pressure keeps them solid. Dunno the physics behind it, but it's worked brilliantly for us. Last week we had sustained winds of 40-50 with a gust measured by the weather service of 90 mph. Other gusts were regular at 60-70. That run didn't budge, even with a snow load on it. Love it!

 

[lazy gardener]

Blooie, what is your soil like? How deep can you drive those T posts, and can you actually drive them in exactly where you want them, and have them go in at the angle you want them to go in at? I think that would make a huge difference. Here, we have more rock than soil where the natural conditions are intact. Driving T posts is an adventure. Often have to remove and replace, sometimes ending up a foot or more from where the hole should have been, then when you get down 6", the post will suddenly hit a boulder or two and head off in it's own direction.

 

[GardenNut]

Good point LG! My soil is full of flint rock!

 

[Blooie]

Ours is hard packed clay and rock. Under the property, lurking in places we never expect, are remains of a stone foundation to the house and other buildings that used to stand here. We never know when we'll run into something under there. But we just pounded those posts directly into the ground, and the couple of places we did hit big rocks or pieces of foundation we dug 'em up. All of the posts except a couple pounded right in.

 

[prophtch44]

Excellent !!!! I love it !!!

 

[lazy gardener]

I have a 12' long CP HC that is very "framed", with a stick built loft dividing the back end into upper and lower portions, with the loft able to be completely enclosed. The bottom frame of that is slowly rotting away, i just may try to replace the bottom framing with T posts when the frame bites the dust. I'd hate to give up that coop, so when time and weather complete the destruction, it will be refurbished. It's completely covered with 1/2" HW cloth on the back 2 panels, with the 3rd panel added with CW covering.

 

[Blooie]

I dunno, LG..maybe it's just me. But it seems to me that the more "stuff" used to build CP hoops and runs, the more resistance and weight we're talking about. Frames require joints, and every joint is a potential weak spot. Without a frame for stiffness, if the cattle panel does flex, it can rebound in short order.

I forgot to answer your questions about how deep the posts are, where we drove them, and about the angle. We didn't pound them in at any angle....in fact Ken was getting owley about a few of them not being straight enough when he pounded them in. The posts we used were 6 footers and we pounded them in about 2 feet deep so they were good and solid just using a fool to hold them straight (that fool would be me) and Ken pounding them in with a sledge hammer. It was actually the only difficult and labor intensive part of the whole build. We started out by laying out the cattle panel flat, then I picked up the end and "stood it up" where we wanted that end to be. He picked up the other end of the panel and walked toward me until we had it the height we wanted. We had rocks in our pockets and dropped them at the point where the panel would meet the post and that's where we put the posts. . Once the first one was in place, we just followed it the rest of the way down. Real scientific! But it's worked great, and for two old geezers with disabilities of one sort or another it was our ideal solution.