Design process

I recently uploaded a video describing my design process with a real project that I worked on this summer.

The first step in any design is to familiarize yourself with the location. Mark out the important features. In this project, we had a road that was very important because it determined which direction the trucks needed to be facing when they were loaded.

Next we had a small pole barn with a cement pad that we wanted to reuse. This is a corral that is used in summertime only, so we didn’t need a big building, and it’s a remote location, so reusing a building made sense. There was a small water tank we wanted to incorporate in an external fenceline, and some trees and power line that were far enough away to not be a big consideration. The final feature was the property line that made the southern boundary of the corrals.

the first step is to get familiar with the site you’re designing on. Decide what can be moved, and what you want to save.

After modeling up the site features, we can figure out where some of the major corral features go. The loading chute needs to go in a certain place so that trucks can be pointed down the road after they are loaded. The working chute has to be under the little pole barn. I decided to face the working chute south so that I’d have more room for sorting pens.

After the working chute nd loading chute are in their required positions, the rest of the corral kind of falls into place.

After those items are in place, the rest of the corral is just kind of connecting the parts together. The holding pens radiate out from the sorting gates. The main holding alley connects the sorting gates to the 2 bud boxes and has gates on the side to allow easy movement from the holding pens. The holding pens all have extra gates to allow easy movement between pen and alley.

Some other features we worked in were to reuse the existing water point, thus saving some plumbing work.

We also made the chute open to the side. By this I mean you have direct access to the chute from the outside, this lets you back your pickup right up to the chute instead of having to carry tools thru gates to the chute. This is a feature I try to work in on every chute that I can. I really like being able to have easy access to the chute. This also lets you add a building much easier later on corrals.

I like being able to access the working chute without going thru any gates.

The final deliverable for a project like this is the 3d model which we did all the design work in, then a dozen or so 2d drawings giving the dimensions of all the pens and showing where things go. Finally, a bill of material that you can use for budgeting and ordering materials.

I hope you’ve found this interesting. If you would like to learn more, feel free to contact me here thru this site.

The Ranch at the end of the World, part 1.

When I was a kid in the 80’s, we lived out in the sand-hills of Nebraska on one of the large ranches that make up that part of fly over country. This being the late 80’s, there was always news of the Evil Empire, the USSR, on the radio. I remember asking my dad if there were ranches in the USSR like the one we lived on. I don’t remember the answer.

Fast forward 25 years, to the summer of 2013 and I found myself in the former soviet republic of Kazakhstan building a ranch.

Abandoned village buildings

The ranch I was working at was a green field project. We had very limited infrastructure. There was no fence, no power, no roads, no barns, houses, or really anything except for a few old wells from the old days. There was an old village near the headquarters of the ranch that looked like it had been abandoned a century ago, but in fact it was only abandoned for 15 years when we moved in. It’s just that mud brick walls don’t last long once people move away!

The crew building some high quality corrals.

The crews for building the ranch mostly came from Uzbekistan, with the foremen being from the city of Almaty Kazakhstan. This is a pretty common arrangement for construction in Kazakhstan. There is more money in Kazakhstan and many workers from Uzbekistan migrate north in much to work in Russia and Kazakhstan ,mostly working in agriculture and construction. They were good workers who would do exactly what you wanted, but you had better tell them exactly what you wanted because that’s what you were gonna get!

One of the guys welding up some rebar on some posts. The welding outfits using just a cheap generator and cheap inverter welder is very common.

The other thing is that a construction crew usually showed up with absolutely zero tools. They would have the cloths on their backs and the sandals on their feet, and that’s it. Because of this, the ranch had to buy tools to do the construction. This is a big of a problem because it means that the managers don’t have a big incentive to get good tools because it’s just for one job. At the time there really wasn’t any such thing as a crew that did fencing or built corrals. It was just a general crew and you had to get everything for them.

We were so remote that we couldn’t get cement trucks, so we mixed it all up by hand.

Despite the challenges, we got a nice set of corrals built and even ordered in a fancy Silencer chute. It was all ready to go by the time the cows arrived and it worked pretty good. A lot of places in Kazakhstan do all this work with really poorly designed and even worse built facilities, so I’m really glad we got things to work good. We had a few challenges with concrete, electricity, and plumbing, but overall it turned out good.

the cows ride from Australia. Boeing 747-400 freighter can haul between 3 and 4 typical American cattle trucks.

The cows were coming from Australia. We got almost 3,000 heifers from down under. It was kind of a challenge because the requirements kept changing and we traveled all over to ranches buying these heifers. They were quarantined for a month in Australia then flown to Kazakhstan on Boeing 747 freight planes. I think they stopped in singapore or somewhere to refuel, so it was like two flights, each 8 hours long.

One of the biggest challenges with flying the cows is that the climate control on a fright plane is really working hard to keep up with almost 400 heifers! Usually it does, but pneumonia is a common problem after this kind of a flight, especially when you consider we were coming out of Australia and into Kazakhstan and the weather wasn’t always cooperating.

Using normal cargo trucks for shipping cattle is not ideal, but it’s very common! These are side dumping russian “Kamaz” trucks. They’re pretty rugged, easy to work on, and not really that smooth, for cows or driver!

After arriving in Almaty, the cows had to be loaded onto semi trucks. For this shipment the trucks weren’t all that great and the guy organizing the trucks would have had a hard time organizing a two car parade down main street in a one horse town. We had all kinds of delays with the trucks, and more than a couple real WTF moments as well!. But they ended up all getting to the ranch. most of them in one piece.

When they arrived at the ranch, the cows had to undergo a pretty extensive quarantine period. This involved having government vets come out and take blood, do some vaccinations, and try to make sure everything was good with the cows. There was (and is) a lot of issues with quality of vaccine, how vaccine is administered, how cows are worked, and how records are kept. Without going into too many details, I’d just say that it’s no wonder that they have so much problems with preventable diseases among the livestock in Kazakhstan and the only thing that really saves them is the sheer distance that separates most farms.

After a bit of arguing, and bit of fighting, and sometimes just doing things our way, we got all the cows thru the quarantine. Now we’re out of the woods…well, not so fast. When you pile together 3,000 heifers from a couple dozen ranches together you’re gonna have some issues. When you throw them all on a plane for a day and a bad truck for another day, then throw in different climate, questionable vet care, and really sketchy feed, you’re gonna have some problems! But I reckon that’s a story for another day.

In the end, we got the cows settled in and turned out to pasture about a month after they had arrived. Everything we had brought was heifers, so we didn’t have any calving to do that winter, so that saved us a lot of work, and it’s a good thing too because it was a tough enough winter with plenty of adventures to keep us busy as it was!

Exploring the new pasture, a couple weeks after arriving and just after getting out to pasture.

Some of the Australian Hereford heifers.

Hydraulic sorting gates, Part 5a: Cylinders

The cylinders and, occasionally, motors, are where the rubber hits the road in a hydraulic gate system. Choosing the right size and mounting them up correctly will make your system work well or break your stuff. In this post we will go over the different options for cylinders and also talk little bit about motors.

The most common way to move the gate is with a cylinder. As we discussed in the post on the power source, a 1.5” cylinder is enough to move most gates. As for length, 12” to 16” is most common and it depends more on how the geometry of mounting the gates is looking, how far does it need to swing, and how are you going to mount the cylinder. The Surplus Center 9-4410-xx cylinder series works really well

One of the important things with mounting up hydraulic cylinders on gates is that you want to have a strong enough gate for it. You need strong hinges (I like sleeves over a round end of the gate on all gates). You also need a strong frame to the gate. I like to use a gate that has sch 40 pipe for the top rail when I know that the gate will be hydraulic. 14 gauge is too light and the tubes can break.

The next thing is to have mounts that are strong and also allow you to remove the gate relatively easily. This design works good for this series of cylinder. It spreads the load out along the gate, making it less likely to break off, and it also gives you an easy way to pin the cylinders in place. This lets you remove the cylinder to open the gate is your hydraulic system breaks down.

When you’re mounting the cylinder, use some vise grips to mount the brackets on your gate and post, then try it a few times. you want the cylinder to move the gate it’s full range of motion without hitting the end of the stroke, you want it to tighten up a little bit, that will keep it from stressing the mounts too much and also make it quieter when open or closed.

This mounting bracket is set thru a hole in the side of the post. This is very strong, but takes a lot of work and you don’t have a lot of room to adjust the angle.

The last thing to talk about is the bracing. There’s 2 ways I have done this. the first is to weld the pipe onto the side of the post, then run a brace back along the fence, either to the next post or to the heavy top rail. A picture of this system can be seen on the top of the page.

The other way is to blow a hole in the post, then stick the mounting tube thru the post and weld it that way. This is a far stronger system than just welding it to the side, so you don’t need to brace it back. When you do this system, I’d recommend using a heavy wall tube, 3/16” instead of 1/8” that you can use on the first system.

Finally, weld everything up and grind it off nice. These mounts are often at a height that a person or horse can hit them if you’re not careful, so clean it up nice and if you’re walking by it all the time, put some foam or rubber padding around the sharp end!

I’ll make a separate part on using hydraulic motors for driving gates as there’s a lot to cover on that, so stay tuned!