Corral System/Crowding Tub Made From Old Grain Bin

Corral System/Crowding Tub Made From Old Grain Bin LIVESTOCK Handling 24-4-18 After looking at commercial corral systems on the market, Bob Gibson decided he couldn't justify the cost. So he set out to build his own system using curved sections off a grain bin. "I use it in my cow calf operation. We have a long lean-to inside our barn where we catch cows to do all our vaccinating and occasionally pull calves. Our new crowding tub leads into a home-built, 23-ft. long alleyway that's connected to the chute. Both the crowding tub and the chute are equipped with swing gates which can both be opened at the same time without interfering with each other," says Gibson. He used 2-in. sq. tubing to build a frame and mounted a 9-ft. long gate on it. The gate swivels on the center lift shaft from an old disk. He then covered the gate with sheet metal (so cattle can't see through) and welded it to the brackets that originally supported the disk's wheels, allowing the gate to swing freely. He made a "catch system" on the gate by welding lengths of old water pipe together into a rectangular frame and attaching it near one end of the gate. The frame is held tight by a spring. The gate can be swung only so far until it catches on one of the combine cylinder bars that act as a stop. It bolts vertically to the crowding tub. To make the crowding tub he got an old 18-ft. dia. grain bin from a neighbor, took it apart, and hauled it to his farm. He overlapped nine of the bin sections together, both vertically and horizontally for added strength, into a 6-ft. high semi circle and then bolted the sections together. The bin sections are attached to the four closed frames welded to the center lift shaft. To form the alley ways, he used some gates that he already had and covered them with sheet metal, then hung them on posts. A 14-ft. gate was attached to the chute via a quick latch and can be swung open in order to pull a calf or let an animal out before it enters the chute. "We checked out the price for a commercial system and the crowding tub alone sold for $1,500. I used 96 ft. of 2-in. tube steel, two quick latches, five cold rolled sheets of steel and five quarts of white paint. My total cost was $454 so we saved a lot of money," says Gibson. "I built it after my mom got hurt a year ago while holding a gate and trying to keep a cow from coming through. The gate's catch system keeps cows from pushing the gate back toward me." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Bob Gibson, 4470 290th Ave., Webb, Iowa 51366 (ph 712 838-4358).

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