80' Round-pen on $500 Budget

5-wire 80' Round-pen

We finally finished building our round-pen, or should I say it's finished for now.  Eventually, we may add some lumber rails, but for now we're satisfied with the 5-wire setup.  I'm not going to go into details with step-by-steps, or how-to build details for the round pen because there are already a ton of great how-to videos and pages that provide those details, I'm just sharing a few pics here of what we did and our materials list to give you another reference for your own design.

It's fairly simple, figure out how much space you have and how big you want your round-pen.  The bigger the better so you have room to work your horses.  For our space we settled on an 80' round-pen and found the center, measured out a 45' piece of rope to help with spacing the posts tacking it to the center of circle, then measured the posts with about a 10' spacing.  We started with an 8' gate opening so we could drive a tractor through to work the ground for good footing, so we set those posts first.   We set the posts in late winter while the ground was still wet and soft.  I used a chainsaw and trimmed points on the end of each post and we drove them into the ground like nails using the bucket on the tractor as our hammer.  It took us less than 3 hours to drive all 25 posts.

Once the posts were set, we hung the gate and that's about as far as we went for a couple months.  Afterwards I tilled the ground within and did a bit more leveling to even out a few small low spots.  We didn't want to hang the wire until the ground was hard and posts were set firm.  We came back and tampered around posts and ensured they were straight up.  I couldn't find the plastic coated wire locally, had to order from Tractor Supply Co and it took about a week to get here.  All other supplies we bought from Wilco Farm Store when they were on sale.

It took me about an hour and a half to measure the staple spacing and hammer in all the staples, then drill and tap the eye-screws.  I did that while we were waiting on the wire to arrive.  Once we got the wire it took 3-4 of us less than two hours to sting the wire, trim and tie-off the ends, and apply some tension.  We did take a break to play with a gopher snake that visited while we were working.  That's pretty much it for the pen itself.  And that's what a $500 round-pen looks like.

Line strainers bolted to eye-screws

We'll want to put down a layer of gravel and then river sand over the top for footing.  It will likely take a couple loads of 3/4 minus, which we'll till into the top layer of soil to provide foundation and drainage, then a couple truck loads of river sand or one truckload of 1/4 minus and a truckload of river sand.  It all depends on how well the 3/4 minus tilled finishes.  The small crushed rock provides better traction over the river sand but too much is harder on the horses feet.  The footing is going to cost another $600 before we're finished I think, but we'd still have that cost even if we'd spent $1,800 for steel panels.



Materials List

25 qty 4-6" x 8' treated post - $7.99 ea. ($200)
8 lbs 1.5" barbed staples - $16.99
6 rail 8' utility gate - $79
Polytuf 12.5 ga. coated high tensile wire 1,350' - $179
5 qty Line strainer - $3.49 ea  ($17.50)
10 qty Eye-screw - $1.29 ea ($13)
5 qty 1/4" x 1' stainless bolts ($0.80)

Getting started

Posts Hammered In