Farnam Portable Corral

[Rides 2 Far <rides2far@juno.com>]

> I have used these panels for the last 3 years and have been very  happy
with > them.  They are lightweight (20 lbs per panel) but sturdy.  Their
> one > shortcoming is that they only have a leg on one end 

I've tried several different corrals that belonged to friends. Here's
some observations:

One type had an attachment that just slid a peg down into the hole on the
next panel. Nice unless the horse stuck his head in and then lifted it. 
We put bungy ties on it to fix that.  Also, they're not flexible so on
uneven ground whole sections would swing back and forth like a gate
unless you had woodblocks or something to put under the posts.

Another brand had the crossbars too widely spaced.  They had three
crosspieces (I think it may have been the Farnum since it was also one
legged which was a pain) one was very high and one was very low. I
thought the lower one was just asking for a horse to paw it with it that
low.  With this girl's horse the problem was the wide spacing. He put his
head through and was leaning into it grazing and the whole thing toppled
over. He got pretty banged up.

I would like to see them come with a little loop at ground level that
would allow you to drive in a tent type peg to anchor the panels if you
want to.  The biggest problem my horse had was that he's not used to
wearing a halter all the time and he kept rubbing on the pen. He was
doing the most damage to the pen with the head rubbing so we switched him
to a collar at night and that solved that.  

 I had a PVC corral. It's not that cheap to build and a pain to set up. 
The PVC seemed to get brittle after a couple of years and we went from
about 20 panels down to 0 in just a few years. 

My favorite arrangement for hauling the panels was a friend's corral
which straddled her wheel well on the trailer and sort of stood on the
fenders while hanging in a mount.  It did vibrate and scratch up the
fender until we learned to put a piece of rubber under the posts.  I
wouldn't mind at all having a metal corral for those few rides where
there's no trees, but all in all I'm happiest with my picketline.

Angie
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