Constructing a round pen

[Footlights]

I would like to build a round pen to free lunge in and do some natural horsemanship stuff in, and wondered if anyone has done this before or has any tips for me?

I will be doing it myself and on a budget, and the easiest way I could think of was with some tall plastic poly posts and electric tape.

The only problem is, how would I get in and out?! I could put a handle on the tape and make a gate, but wouldn't the whole thing just fall down everytime I unconnected it?

Sorry if this is a really stupid question, I just can't think how to do it! lol

 

[YasandCrystal]

We built a 20m diameter one. My advice would be the bigger the better. My optimum size would be 25m - 30m, but definately no smaller than 20m

We built it with 4 " rounds and half round rails and used builders mesh (except horse has chewed it) to fill in lower half. We put woodchip straight down for a good 10m track around inside.

Could you not create a fixed gateway using 2 x 4" posts and even a simple homemade triangular gate made of 4" x 2" wood? Or with 2 slip rails and then have your plastic electric posts coming from there and around? That would be inexpensive.

Sorry this is a bit of a distance shot!!

 

[Footlights]

Wow! That looks amazing!

Do you build it yourself? Do you know roughly how much the materials cost you?

 

[YasandCrystal]

Yes we built it ourselves. It's actually simple enough. We put a post in every 6 ft, so each rail (12ft long) was cut in 2. The rails were around £1.75 each and the posts around £2, I think.

I reckon there are around 30 posts and you would need around 20 rails (is that right?) The gate was cheap enough £56 - most expensive thing was the Kitch Katch shutting mechanism. We got the bark via a local tree surgeon cheap. It's something you could do by stages. You could start with the posts and tape and then get the rails etc when you have funds.

 

[Miss L Toe]

There is another posting , using those barriers found on building sites, very portable

 

[Footlights]

I like the idea of using posts and tape and then adding railings and bark at a later date. We rent the field, so if it wasn't something that was easy to take back down again I would have to speak with the owner - he is pretty easy going though.

I was thinking about those builders barrier things, but I wasn't sure how easy they were to knock down if horse spooked or something? I have seen Monty Roberts use a similar thing for his demos though.

 

[carterk3]

I too would like to build a lunge pen to reduce the wear in my school. Did you put in any drainage? Do you find the wood fibre freezes in the winter or get's mushy?

 

[YasandCrystal]

I too would like to build a lunge pen to reduce the wear in my school. Did you put in any drainage? Do you find the wood fibre freezes in the winter or get's mushy?

We didn't put in any drainage. The siting is on pretty dry land. After a long bout of rain the woodchip gets a bit soggy, but otherwise fine. The only mistake we made was to put too much woodchip down at the start - I had to rake loads up - you want a 4" covering max imo.
If you can afford to run some drains accross I would go for it - we did on our manege we built at home and that never floods or ftreezes.

 

[Footlights]

Did you just put the woodchip straight down onto grass?

I would love to see more pictures from others who have built their own round pen!

 

[Pippin79]

We built one about 2 years ago. We put in drains with a sump pit, limestone, membrane and then sand and rubber. We probably could have got away without the drains and limestone but I wasn't brave enough! We used the building site barriers supported with a post and rail fence and kickboards (we wanted high sides as we use it with youngsters and stallions etc and didn't want any jumping out! Ours is 20m diametre which is big enough for us and big horses canter in it quite happily, I don't think you'd want it too big for the loose work anyway. I am pretty sure we paid £500 for the barriers, we dug them in the ground a bit as otherwise I don't think they're stable enough and they would rattle a lot if kicked. We definitely did the whole thing (including surface) for less than the price of purchasing a same size lunge pen from one of the main manufacturers. The surface isn't perfect though, we were talked into the rubber strips that are meant to knit together, I think they're awful and just buried down and stopped it from stabilising. Now we have taken them out and just have sand, we have to harrow it daily but it does get a hammering of lunging most days and now don't do any lunging in the school which is great.

 

[Stinkbomb]

This was my round pen i made, very simple, very cheap!! I dont have it now, i took it down so we could roll the fields and couldnt be bothered putting it back!

 

[ILuvCowparsely]

I made my round pen out of Heras fencing



when i have some spare money i am going to sink the feet in the ground but first want to dig the track around and put membrane and some surface its not finished yet .. but you can still use it

.