Home made round pens?

~Perdita.M~

~Perdita.M~

Two Little Boys
May 20, 2003
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Kent
Been trying to think of ways to get some more variety into our lives! No school on the farm, little hacking and few flat surfaces!:rolleyes: So........I was wondering, has anyone ever made a round pen from straw bales?:D How big does it have to be, in diameter (that spelling doesnt look right!) and height of the sides? Also, it would have to be in an empty field, so is the grass underfoot going to make life much harder on the old concentration, or would it still be worth the effort in building, if I can persuade the farmer to let me?:p
 
Have you thought about using electric fencing instead (not switched on :eek: )? It's much easier to move it around the field if the going gets a little slippery or boggy. Also, a lot lighter to move around ;). HTH

Nix
 
I think it's worth a try. The roundpen and one of the arenas at my boarding barn had grass. Later on we got sand brought into the roundpen but it worked okay before too.

Roundpens are quite large (60 ft. diameter) so I am assuming straw must be really cheap were you live? Otherwise using fence posts and fence tape might be more economical in the long run?
 
True, true, maybe I hadnt considered how much straw we'd need:eek: :D Not planning on building till the spring though, so hopefully ground wouldnt get too bad........straw is about £1 a bale from our local person. How many bales do you reckon I'd need?:eek: Then i guess it would just be a case of working out which would be cheaper!

p.s - Nix did you get the pm, hope I didnt cause any trouble?:( I remembered after Id sent it the health issues regarding the situation, which makes it even worse I suppose:(
 
grass can be a bit slippy in certain situations so you would want to be a bit careful e.g. if its wet.
 
round pen building

I Built my own round pen, literally with 2 or 3 days help from a man, it was struggle to do it but I got it done , and it's great. Except when winter came and the woodchip surface became lethally slippery ( bought very cheaply locally, with too much bark- avoid like the plague!Get real equine woodchip if you are going for it at all). As for straw bales- good idea! I'd advise AGAINST electric fence as some horses will barge right through it and can get tangelled up- have seen this happen. Not a pretty sight. Also, the solid look to a straw bale wall is much better psychologically, no so much temptation to reach over to grass greenr on oher side. With unpowered electric fencing horses can easily duck their heads under the tape for a much. If you wanted to make it more long-term you could make it out of stra bale and then plaster the walls- this is a form of building that is popular in eco-circles, cheap and easy. Do a search on the internet for 'straw bale buildings'.
the standard diameter for a round pen is 50 foot, or 60 for draught very big horses. Good luck!
 
How many bales do you reckon I'd need?
Click to expand...

No math wizard but I'll give it a shot:
The diamter is 60 feet and we are looking for the circumference
C=3.14*d

So that's 188.4. Rounding up to 189.
A big bales is about 3 feet long, isn't it?
So that's 63 bales once around.
How tall are straw bales? About 1 foot?
Let's say you want 4 ft high round pen walls.
That would be 252 bales.
 
:eek: Hmm, yes, well I can see why I come into the *dreamer* category of personality types as opposed to practical!:eek: 252! Blimey, even with cheap straw thats still a fortune, although I could do it at 50ft diameter as he's only little. It is a possiblity though, maybe I could ask the local farmer at the end of the winter season for some old poor quality bales if there are any left:)

Thanks for the advice everyone, Herbie thank you too, the info was very helpful, and welcome to New Rider!:)
 
Perdita

If you used big bales it would take fewer, be thicker walled - but you'd need a tractor to position them.

But sometimes farmers use these as wind breaks so may have "grotty ones" they want to relocate ?

What will you use as a "gate" ?

If you go for the "tape" approach - use safety tape rather than electric fence. You can get it from Screwfix. (Like the stuff the police put up to cordon areas off but in red and white). It would break if a horse went through it, so is safer, but they do seem to respect it. Plus you can just knot it together again and its relatively cheap for a long roll. (I use this for loose jump lanes in our school).
 
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Gate. Well, in my over active unpractical imagination (that didn't take into consideration how many bales we'd need!) I had thought that if we used ordinary sized bales, I would have a couple stacked inside, to put in to fill the gap up when we were safely inside:)
 
arabmare - try the tape I mentioned ! cos its not heavy you can support it on all sorts of things.

I make jumping lanes using barrels, bending poles - anything that I can wrap the tape around basically ;)

I haven't done a round pen cos I haven't needed to (just loose school in the arena). But I know I could if I needed to.
 
@cvb - Excellent idea re: safety tape, although haven't had any probs with horses trying to go through leccy tape that's a much safer option :)

@Tara - Sorry I hadn't replied to your pm yet, and no worries - no trouble caused, will pm you now
 
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