RE: [RC] Making your own portable corral- PVC Experience - Paul Sidio
A few years ago, my plumber friend helped me make a
portable corral out of PVC. We wiped out several
hardware stores supplies of "T" 's and 90 degree corners. It was to
be a four rail corral with 6 foot panels so it would fit in the back of a
short bed pickup.
After lots of measuring and sawing and painting
purple stuff all over everything, we finally got it glued together. It
looked beautiful. I put my very calm and easy to pen horse in it and stood back
to watch. He walked around and looked it over and calmly began to graze.
He put his head between two rails to grab a bite of tall grass, and when he drew
his head back into the pen, he bumped into one of the PVC pipes. It fell
apart like a tinker toy house built by a 5 year old. He just stepped
back and looked at the pile of loose pieces in shock. He must have
been laughing like crazy on the inside. Then he slowly stepped over the mess and
kept on grazing. So we grabbed the purple stuff, and re-glued everything back
together. We let it sit overnight and tried again the next day. We
put my horse in it, and 10 minutes later, he walked up to the fence and gave it
a head butt and then stepped back as the pipes clattered to the ground.
Then he stepped over the pieces to eat grass.
The next day I bought a lightweight galvanized
portable corral. It has worked great for over 5 years now.
The reason you don't see many homemade corrals at
endurance rides isn't because we all have so much extra money that we just enjoy
buying luxuery goods for our hobby. It is because many of us have tried and
either come up with something that fell apart, or weighed so much it took a fork
lift to move it.
