Portable Sheep Grazing Pen

Portable Sheep Grazing Pen LIVESTOCK Sheep/Goats 29-5-2 "My wife raises organic lambs to sell at the market in our local town. Building permanent fences on our property wasn't an immediate option," says Jeff Ennis. "I thought a portable, self-contained sheep grazing pen would be the fastest way to take advantage of our unfenced acres so I designed and built my own system. It works great." The 6-panel unit has two tires on each end and sled runners on the outer corners. It's heavier than Ennis had expected when building it. He estimates that it weighs somewhere around 5,000 or 6,000 lbs. It slides on the skids when moving it in the field so it doesn't have to be lifted. Ennis pulls the pen from one grazing spot to the next with a tractor or pickup. "I used railroad iron for the 30-ft. arch, which is a span that's 7 ft. above the ground and ties the front wheels to the back wheels. When it's in transport mode for the road, the arch holds the weight of the folded panels, which hang on two moveable hooks on each side. Most of the rest of the materials I used were just scrap steel I had on hand," Ennis says. "Because of the arch, there's nothing on the ground that you can trip on, and nothing to hit your head on. One person can set it up for grazing in 15 minutes." He explains that four of the six panels are flexible; they can twist 30¦ and flex vertically 60¦ with no interference. He made them this way because of the uneven ground they'd be used on. Instead of using a pin hinge, he sawed big chain links in half and welded them to the end of the pipe to allow them to flex. When it's folded up for transport, the rig is 8 ft. wide by 45 ft. long. When it's expanded, it's in an octagon shape, approximately 27 ft. across. Ennis stretches a 12 by 16-ft. tarp across the middle of the span to provide the sheep with shade. The pen also has a fold-down, fold-out loading chute on the back of it. The chute has flip-up sides. There's also a "man gate" on the back side, next to the loading chute. "I have a 55-gal. water barrel with a miniature stock trough on the front. It has a float valve so they have water on demand, anywhere they are. I've got a 255-gal. water tank in the back of a pickup and that's my nurse truck," Ennis says. "We graze 25 sheep in the pen and move them two or three times a day, never taking the sheep out of the pen. You only move it the length of itself. Immediately, when you start moving ahead, they all rush to the front to get to the green grass that's coming." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Jeff Ennis, 1350 Old Avon Rd., Deary, Idaho 83823 (ph 208 877-1376; pondstead @moscow.com; www.littlerockfarms.com).

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