I thought I'd post some photos of the handling area that I installed. I started with an 18'x21' shelter. It's really a carport, but clearly that's not what I'm using it for. I'm in Florida and while the shelter sits under some deep shade, I needed a structure to be able to attach fans to in the hotter months. The fact that it is 18' wide is absolutely perfect for creating a wonderful handling and training area. I took one of the two 5'x9' light weight corral panels that I had to a metal fabricator and he did an absolutely perfect job of creating the additional panels for me. If you look for a local machine shop, that's a great place to start and this way you'll have the size panels that you need and don't have to pay any shipping. You should be able to get these made at a fairly reasonable price (unless you can weld in which case you can make them yourself). The area has 4 nine foot catch pens and a larger turn around area at one end. Sixteen foot wire fence panels were used to enclose the entire handling area and there are two 9' corral panels at each end so that I can bring the animals into the area and then direct them into the pens for handling or just gather them in the large area if need be. As you can hopefully see in these photos, a nice 9' lane way is created to use for lead training and the "trainee" still gets to be with her pals. It makes the process all go very smoothly. I also feed the animals in this handling area. So, they're very comfortable in there and pretty much just hang out there a lot. If you want to duplicate what I've done you'll need the following materials (you can find the materials list and the diagram in The Camelid Companion): 11 five foot by nine foot panels (if you use either a fence or the back wall of the shelter as one side as I did) 4 4'x16' wire fence panels (you'll may need more depending on where you locate this on your property) 19 T posts 4 pieces of 2" PVC (sleeves for the T posts) Heavy Duty zip ties - I used 22" 250 pound ties from buycableties.com I always keep these babies around 4-6 Hold Everythings - Something else I have a bunch of and keep around Essentially, what I did was to try to duplicate what Marty has set up at the CameliDynamics Center. I think it worked out great at my farm. I had the luxury of knowing all of this when I was setting up my farm and didn't put in the first fence post until I'd been out to Bend to see Marty's setup, and had been to several clinics to see the setup in action. The other piece of advice she gave was to use heavy duty cable ties so that we have flexibility. I think you can see those in the photos as well. Hope this is helpful.
