Drive-Through Electric Gate

Drive-Through Electric Gate FENCING Gates 29-6-17 "It saves me a lot of steps when entering the feedlot because I don't have to get on and off the tractor all the time," says Perry Hathaway, Claypool, Ind., who came up with a simple design for an inexpensive drive-through electric gate that eliminates the need to get in and out of the vehicle. The gate is made of a fiberglass pole wrapped with electric fence tape. The end of the fiberglass pole fits into a short piece of metal pipe that's hinged to a piece of channel iron bolted to the gate post. A bolt goes through the end of the pipe to form the hinge. A cable runs from the center of the gate up over an insulator on top of the gate post to a garage door opener inside a nearby barn. The cable attaches to the chain on the opener. Hathaway uses a remote control in his tractor or pickup to activate the garage door opener. "It works as good as any commercial automatic gate opener and cost very little to build," says Hathaway, who has used the gate for six years. "The gate doesn't raise a full 90 degrees but does raise far enough that I can drive through with no problem. "I came up with the idea because cattle were jumping over the cattle guard that's now under the gate. I tried installing a conventional gate over the cattle guard, but sometimes during the winter the snow would drift in so high that I couldn't swing the gate open. By being able to raise this gate up-and-down I don't have that problem. "It didn't cost much to build. I got the garage door opener for free from someone else. I paid about $16 for the fiberglass rod. A conventional electric drive-through gate sells for about $500." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Perry Hathaway, 4238 W 625 South, Claypool, Ind. 46510 (ph 574 491-3448).

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