Cattle handling pen on a budget

[RedRock]

My suggestion is can you put the head gate back further,what if you miss are you gonna have to try and get them pened up again? See the second pen your talking about has gate in it that opens into shoot that way if missed it will only be able to run into the second pen and not out into pasture,then just have to run them back into first pen,only reason cows go out end of shoot is if loading into trailer. We can run the ones already worked back around and force the ones that havent been up so they are not trying to turn around or back up,when done we let them set in pen alittle while to keep an eye on them,we have had a few that it has stress out pretty good and its nice to have them right there if need to doctor them. Just my two cent ideas

Good point, but I'm afraid I'm a bit too far along to change things up. On the small acreage I'm operating on I'll likely never have more than 4 or 5 head to work at a time. I'll have to make sure I don't miss with the headgate catch and leave the chute section behind the headgate open to back the cow up to the escape gate if needed. It's going to serve as a palp section as well. One thing not shown in the drawings are stop gates between each section.

I plan on putting the headgate on a heavy duty hinge to swing open for easier loading. My main question was looking for ideas on how to finish off the transition between the horizontal rails and the wider headgate posts. I think I've decided on some large angle iron welded with the rails butted and welded too. I think it would be more trouble than it's worth to try and set poles that close together without compromising the strength of the headgate poles.