Portable yards – the yard on the move
Host: Noreena Downs Station
Written by Kate Paull – Owner, Noreena Downs Station.
At Noreena we have one main set of yards at the homestead, and work off two areas where we have portable yards. These are called Stock route and Peadonah. At the mo we are at Peadonah, we have a stock camp there where we will be for six to seven weeks.
Portable yards are great, pack them up and move them to where you want them. Most people hate shifting portables but I don’t mind it so much, it’s cool fun making a yard and seeing the end product. I like attempting in changing some pens to see if it works better for the cattle, different gates, panels and angles, challenging, and sometimes time consuming but how else do you learn.
For the panels we have a variety of things that help hold the panels together such as pins or rio rod pins with bent heads, nuts and bolts for the bull yards, chain and boot panels, big heavy duty chain on some spots where panels meet up together and yes you’s hear it coming Cobb and Co. That’s a special wire twist and knot to hold stuff together (we use eight gauge wire). Back in the old days this is one of the things they used to put their wooden yards together and help hold it together (the wire they used was more heavy duty than what we use today). I will try and get a couple of photos of the old type of wire with a Cobb and Co and what it looks like these days when we use it for Cobb and Co.
Stockroute yards. 
Truck entering Peadonah with panels on board yay.
Loading ramp (elevated ramp for cattle to enter the truck) under tow.
The Mack doing some panel (what we use to make the yards) carting.
The rattle pod jungle where we had to put our heavy duty Mickey bull yards at Peadonah, the hill in the background is called Mt Cooke, such a view working in the cattle yards with that as your background. Photo below is the heavy duty Mickey yards set up and no more rattle pod.
Our old retired loading ramp made out of old windmill column, tin tank sheets/sides, old motorcar axle and diff , wooden beams on walkway inside and many other random bits, what a beast, been trodden on by many a bovine. You can even see the conveyor belt hanging out the side.
The three photos above are old yards at Kalona bore.
Two Cobb and Co twitches, used to hold the wooden posts together.