Cattle guard size ??

[Homer75]

I have an up and coming project to build a cattle guard and wanted to ask depth question. I’m putting this in a gate that’s 16’ wide so my width will be 16’ but, I’ve seen bulls jump a cattle guard before and was thinking 7’ or 8’ length would make them second guess jumping the crossing.

[D4H]

It depends how hot the heifers are on the other side. Just kidding. I believe 8 foot would be sufficient but they may try it anyway. Bulls in love are not very smart. Neighbor came home one day and his favorite roping horse was standing in his cattle guard belly deep. You might consider spacing the pipes closer together to keep the bulls feet from going through the cattle guard. You may have early unwanted calves but you won't have a bull with a broke leg. Just my 2 cents...

[Draco]

A beer can is the perfect spacing for the pipes. 7' should be plenty. Most pipe comes in 31' pieces so if you build the wings on the ends of the cattle guard you could get by with getting 2 pipes out of every stick of pipe and have 0 waste with your 16' of width.

[cva34]

Been around and crossed many cattle guards..But sorry don't know about sizes...I always liked those BUMP gates out in West Tx..

[gandergitter]

16x8 is a common size. If you can set it about 2" deep on concrete sills you will be fine. Ive seen them walk cattle guards that were a foot deep.

[Sidro]

If the guard is going to have lots of water run thru it pour a bottom in the concrete base. This will keep sides it sits on from getting undercut by the water causing them to sink or collapse. Just makes a sturdier base with less problems down the road and stops any shifting.

[cj7zrcool]

8' wide, dirt skirts, & concrete sills if you want it to last.

[Homer75]

A beer can is the perfect spacing for the pipes. 7' should be plenty. Most pipe comes in 31' pieces so if you build the wings on the ends of the cattle guard you could get by with getting 2 pipes out of every stick of pipe and have 0 waste with your 16' of width.

Glad you mentioned the wings, wasn’t sure what I was going to do on the sides.

[Drycreek3189]

A little known trick to keep animals from walking the c/g is to paint the first pipe white, the next two black, and keep alternating colors all the way across. It makes it look like a big space and they won’t step on it. I can’t prove that it works, but what do you have to lose ?

I know you can put some thin steel on each side over the pipe runners where the cows would first step. I’ve seen that work.

[dclifton]

8 FT wide. 6 is for sure to narrow. And i would venture to say 7 will be to. My problem has always been yearlings jumping them.

[softpoint]

Built a BUNCH of them over the years for oilfield. Eight feet wide. 12 pipes if 2 7/8 top pipe, 13 pipes if doing 2 3/8 top pipes. I still have the channel iron spacers I used. I used a variety of bottom runners, from I beam and casing pipe, No smaller than 5 1/2inch. Most were around 15 feet wide, so you could cut the threads and couplers off 32 foot joints and still get 2 top rails.( you can leave them on, but ugly...) 5 "sleepers" or bottom runners. That puts a bottom runner near where the weight of most trucks will be centered. I built some with tapered bottom runners that could be just laid down on the ground with no dirt work, too. And the top gets a 2x1/4 flat strap on each side to prevent the pipes from "rolling" and possibly breaking the welds.