Has anybody ever seen a cattle guard while on a high fence ranch? I want to fence in 60 acres for a breeding program and also be able to have guests come over and access my pond. To get there, they would either have to go through a gate, or hopefully drive across a cattle guard. I would still have a gate, but for those times people are here, I'm hoping that I can have a way to keep it open and not have anything get out.

Links to pictures, observations on what you have seen and how it was built would be greatly appreciated. Also how wide it was and the spacing, or gap between the pipes.

Thank you,
Eddie

Maybe

http://www.2tcattleguard.com/2t_cattle_guard_overview.htm

I have seen a dozen of them or so, was told they work good. The ones I saw were like 20 x24s. I mean they are monsters. But just not sure how good they work.

Cattle and horses great. WT and axis no idea

I have seen the ones like Lonnie suggested on ranches in the Boerne area that had a lot of exotics(large variety of species of hoofstock). The only issue they had was with a Gemsbok that kept trying to walk on cattle guard. The cattle guard needs to be wide enough to discourage jumping or walking it and needs to have tall wings on both sides that extend into the pasture where the animals will be. The ranch I managed, we installed electric gate openers that we could lock if needed since they were much cheaper than the large cattle guards.

Here is a picture I found of Natural Bridges Wildlife Park that shows one that seems to be working. I'm thinking that all the animal parks have something like this, which means it's doable.

Thank you,
Eddie

I agree the electric gates. It is what we have too, I haven't had any problems out of them.

Stxranchman I too have seen and drove over the same cattle guards... And the do keep in over 400k in animals with no worries. However I do like the gate idea better!

If you use entry and exit entry keypad buttons, then you could have an animal lick the button to get out. Had that issue with one pen of exotics once. Only thing I could figure out was it was the salt/mineral/feed on from my sweaty hands on the buttons. The entry pads even had flip up weather covers on them and the animals would lick or nudge up the cover then lick the button that opened the gate.

Key pad to get in , pressure plate to get out. Works great for us.