Round pen as arena

[Rainier]

We bought a new place with a 6 acre pasture. It is all irrigated. It is great other than it is a bit uneven and it has pocket gophers :(. I have a young horse and before this he was always at a barn with arenas, round pens, etc. My pony (who my mom rides) is pretty reliable, but my mom is a re-rider at 74. To be able to safely work with my young horse and for my mom to ride in a secure area, I’ve been looking at large round pens that could be placed and then removed if we later no longer needed them. I can always ride out in the field and put jumps out there, etc. The issue will always be the pocket gophers no matter what. I would love to eventually put up a 100 x 200’ arena with footing, etc., but that is not going to happen for a number of years likely. and we’d have to tear up part of our irrigation.

So, I’ve been looking at 100’ round pens as a possibility. They seem like they are large enough that you could do some decent groundwork and even be able to put up a few jumps. Has anybody done that? I could also easily make it into a 120’ with an additional four panels. thoughts?

[NaturalSelection]

I have a 80’ diameter fenced round pen with proper footing and a separate 150’ x 300’ unfenced grass riding area. I’ve made this set up work for my three young horses. Some days I wish I had a fenced in big arena with all weather footing, but I can’t justify the expense or permanence.

[Rainier]

THose both and the combination sound lovely. I’m going to have to make the roundpen area as even as possible. It will likely stay grass until we decide what to do otherwise. I’m sure I will be constantly smoothing over and tamping gopher holes

[Heinz_57]

I haven’t done that specific thing, but I can say my outdoor is only 60x90 and it’s totally fine for dinking around, especially on a small horse that doesn’t have a giant stride. And nothing says you have to arrange the panels in a perfect circle although you’d probably have to provide some supports on longer straight sides.

[OfCourseItsAnAlter]

At my previous place, I made do with an 80’ square “arena” and open grass field. The 80’ square was sometimes just a smidge too small for my large horses and I regretted not putting in one more 16’ section on each side to have a 96’ square, so I think a 100’ round pen would be plenty big enough.

[SugarCubes]

I am in a similar position, planning on a large indoor down the road but had to put something in when the horses moved home so I could keep them in work. I put in a 100x100 oval/squarish oddly shaped ring, and it totally works. I can’t set courses, but I make do with bending lines and have room to set some singles and diagonal lines. My 17h warmblood with a massive stride has a harder time cantering in there, but it’s been good for her adjustability and balance, I think. It is a nice size to jump my little quarter horse around though. It definitely beats riding in the pasture

[enjoytheride]

My outdoor arena is a circle, 100 feet across. It was built for cutting horses and they’d have several buffalo in the arena plus hold clinics with multiple horses. It’s an odd shape but I can do flatwork and jump in it.