Pipe Panel / Corral panels -- safest bar spacing

[cardinale]

Those of you using pipe panels for horse stabling: what do you think is the safest number of rails and distance of bottom rail from the ground? These will be used to make 24’ x 24’ pens/stalls under shade. There will be plywood around the panels in the back half but the front and gate will be just the open rails, so I’m wondering about the safest spacing to minimize horses getting cast or legs/necks stuck. Does more room at the bottom give them more chance to extricate themselves, or just more room to get stuck? Thank you.

No stallions/mustangs/foals, so the typical 5’ tall panel should be fine.

Typical spacing for 5’ tall panels:
3 bars: ~15" between rails, bottom rail 24" off ground
4 bars: 12 1/2" between rails, bottom rail 16" off ground.
5 bars: 8 1/2" between rails, bottom rail ~18" off ground

[poltroon]

I have four rail panels and they have served me well. The other thing that I’d say is to go for the heavier gauges of steel, and to pay attention to the rust protection treatment - IME powder coated panels that are not first galvanized rust quickly (I’ve even seen them rusted on display at the farm store).

In general, panels that are shipped nationally through chain stores are lighter gauge to save on shipping costs and to provide a more price-competitive product. I’ve been happier with the ones that are locally fabricated.

If you don’t already have the shade in place, you can get the panels custom made to hold a roof. I have those too. Most local companies in California who make pipe panels will also have some designs in hand for covered stalls that can be standalone or made into the mare-motel style, and they’ll customize them too. For example, mine are customized so that the south side outside wall is plywood on the bottom half - it has tabs to accept the plywood instead of having rails.

I’ve been happy with both these local vendors:
https://www.martinranchsupply.com/ca…ered-corrals-0
http://scbarns.com/barns-ag-division/

They’re probably not local to you but the pictures may be helpful in knowing what’s possible.

[Bluey]

Over 50+ years, we have used many and seen others use even more pipe panels of all kinds.
When we were training border collies, we had 9 bar panels in pens, to keep the hair sheep and goats in.
In general, we prefer the Powder River green medium duty panels with square tops for horse pens.
Those are six bars so horses won’t stick heads thru the bars, but still far enough that if one kicks thru it can get it’s leg back.
The pipes are strong enough, but if a horse really hits a panel hard, the pipes will give enough so the horse doesn’t get hurt like if it hit something solid.

We never had any horse injured in any panels, even when some may have rolled next to one and get legs thru and need help to get loose.
We had one yearling colt that seem to do that on purpose for a while.
Every day at noon he would take a nap by the fence, wake up and roll into it and lay there waiting for us to come get him loose.
He finally grew up past that, thankfully.

What is not so good for horses is using big, heavy well pipe, because if a horse hits it, that pipe doesn’t has any give to it, the horse can get injured on it.
A neighbor built his pens like that and had too many injuries, so took the pipes off, just left the posts, those are ok made of big pipe and added lighter pipe horizontally and said he never again had a hurt horse, just some bent pipes here and there to replace.

The most important to keep in mind is to be careful who you have in a pen and who across a fence and not put horses that fight close to each other.

[wsmoak]

I would use these: https://www.noblepanels.com/shelter-5_6_rail.htm

I think the important parts are the square tops, no ‘mud foot’ or loop at the bottom, as is seen on a lot of panels, and that the upright braces are saddle welded in between the horizontals, not a piece that is squashed and welded to the back side.

Here is a summary of the Noble panel features: https://www.noblepanels.com/panelinf.htm

[cardinale]

Thanks for the information–that’s a big help.

wmsoak–that looks very nice but AFAIK Noble makes their shelters typically 8’ tall with custom 9’ tall the highest. Would 16-17hh horses conking their heads be a concern?

[wsmoak]

Re: the height, I have not had a problem with an 8’ minimum height on my Klene Pipe shelter. It’s a saltbox roof so 8’ in the front where they walk in, and there’s a pipe running front to back in the middle of the 12x24.

I assume if you get the 9’ height then it’s 8’ in the back (at the lowest point) ? That wouldn’t worry me, but YMMV. Do you have an established older herd, or a bunch of young ones inclined to do dumb things?

But I was mostly pointing out the panel features – the spacing between the bars is not the most important thing IMO.

[BroncoMo]

I don’t have much to offer in the way of spacing. I have Priefert premier panels (the heavy gray ones) and haven’t had any serious injuries (knock on wood), just scrapes here and there.

I will say never use a panel that has a gap between them and attach with pins. Opt for a panel with flush closure between panels and attach with chains. I am a stickler for keeping joints as tight as possible to avoid a leg getting stuck. Well my brilliant over-grown toddler hunter was playing one day with another over-grown toddler over the fence.
He apparently reared up and managed to jam a pastern down in between two panels (despite how tight I had the joint), and went over backwards with his leg stuck. I don’t know how long he was there; somewhere between an hour and four hours. When I found him, I was able to quickly deploy a sawzal and cut one chain link to free him.

If it had been a panel with a pin closure, his leg would have sat on top of the pin with no way to remove, and I would not have been able to cut the panel away from his leg without risking cutting him. I have no doubt he would still be wearing that panel joint if it weren’t for the chain closure.

It may not happen often, many people don’t have issues… right up until they do. I’ve never had pin closure panels but if I had any that day, I would have spent the rest of the night promptly cutting them up in to pieces.