Most small yards fail in the same way. Not because the steel was cheap, but because a dimension was guessed — a race a hundred millimetres too wide, a forcing pen twice the size it should be, a ramp too steep for a truck driver to be comfortable with. The animals find those mistakes immediately, and you live with them for twenty years.
The good news is that almost every measurement you need has already been worked out and published. The bad news is that it is scattered across a 2006 Queensland manual, a Victorian extension page, a transport industry guide and a body of American behavioural research. This is that material pulled into one place, for a herd of roughly five to thirty head, with the sources named so you can check anything that matters to you.
Start with the number you will actually hold
Everything downstream is sized from the mob you need to yard at once. Queensland's Cattle Yards: Design, Materials and Construction — still the standard Australian technical reference — gives space allowances per head by yard function:
- Receiving yards: 2.2 m² per adult beast
- Holding yards: 2 m² per head
- Drafting yards: 1.8 m² per head, for mobs of 20–30
- Cooling yards: 2.5 m² per head minimum
For thirty head in a holding yard, that is about sixty square metres — near enough to eight metres by eight. It is worth sitting with that number before you buy panels, because it is usually smaller than people picture.
One honest caveat: those figures are stated per adult beast, not broken down by class. I could not find an authoritative Australian source giving separate square-metre allowances for weaners, cows and bulls in farm yards, and Victoria's saleyards welfare code deliberately declines to set a number at all, defining adequate space instead as "that area that allows the stock to move freely around the pen." Anyone quoting you class-specific figures is extrapolating.
The race is the one dimension to get exactly right
A race that is too wide lets a beast turn around, and a beast that turns around in a race is a problem that takes half an hour and someone's shoulder to solve. Too narrow and you bruise animals and jam the ones you most need to move.
For a parallel-sided race, Queensland specifies 680 mm internal width, opening to 700 mm for large European breeds. Agriculture Victoria's plan for a 10–50 head facility specifies 690 mm plus the rail thickness. Anywhere in that 680–700 mm band is defensible; drifting to 750 is not.
A V-shaped race suits mixed sizes better, because small and large animals each find their own width. Queensland gives 450 mm at ground level splaying to 690–700 mm at one metre. Temple Grandin's figures are close enough to confirm it: 41–45 cm at the bottom, 81 cm at the 152 cm level.
A myth worth killing: you will be told that Bos indicus cattle need a wider race. The sources do not support it. Grandin gives the same race width for Brahman as for British and European cattle — 66–71 cm for adults. What changes for Brahman, Brahman-cross and infrequently handled cattle is fence height: 167–183 cm rather than the 152 cm that suits quiet English breeds. Build the race the same width and build the sides taller.
Race length scales with the mob. Queensland gives a 3 metre minimum for 1–10 head and 5 metres for 10–50, excluding the crush itself. Grandin's often-quoted nine-metre minimum is for operations handling large numbers and does not apply to a small block.
Rail spacing, from the ground up: 300 mm to the bottom rail, then 250 mm for the next two, then 250–280 mm above that. A calf race is a different animal entirely — 400–600 mm internal, sides 1150 mm high, sheeted solid to at least 900 mm.
The forcing pen, and why bigger is worse
This is where most home-built yards go wrong. The instinct is to make the forcing pen generous. The instinct is exactly backwards: a wide forcing pen lets cattle turn and mill, and it needs more people to work.
Queensland describes a tapered rectangular forcing pen — no wider than 3.5 metres, 4–6 metres long, with one side angled at 30–35° into the race. Their note is blunt: yards wider than six metres usually need more than one person to work. If you prefer a round pound, the figures are 4.6 m across for a hexagon or 5.4 m for an octagon.
Grandin's circular crowd pen has an ideal radius of about 3.5 metres with a 180-degree turn, and carries one instruction people routinely ignore: fill it less than half full. The forcing pen is sized to hold roughly one race-full of cattle, not the whole mob. Crowding it is the single most common handling error on a small place.
Curved or straight? What the evidence actually supports
Curved races have become an article of faith, and it is worth being precise about which parts are proven and which are convention.
The solid sides finding is well supported. Grandin's work found cattle moved faster through a crowd pen with solid fences than through pipe or partially open board fencing, and that wild cattle became much more agitated in the open-sided section of a race. The mechanism is simple: solid sides block the sight of people and movement ahead.
The curve itself rests on weaker ground than its reputation suggests. Grandin's own account presents it as field observation across many feedlots rather than controlled trial, though her review work cites time savings of up to 50 per cent from circular crowd pens and curved races. WorkSafe Victoria endorses curved single-file races as good practice.
For five to thirty head, a straight race with solid sides is entirely legitimate. The curve earns its cost at throughput, not at hobby scale. Spend the money on sheeting instead.
The loading ramp
Ramp figures are where the Australian sources genuinely disagree, so here is the range rather than a false single answer.
Gradient is the important one. Queensland gives a maximum of 1 in 3 (about 30°) but says gentler slopes of 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 are better. The livestock transport industry's own safe design guide says the ramp should not exceed 20°, and Grandin gives 20° as the maximum for a fixed ramp. Design to 20 degrees. Thirty is a ceiling, not a target, and a truck driver will remember which one you built.
The rest of the numbers converge reasonably well:
- Height: 1.17–1.2 m to meet a semi-trailer deck (1100 mm for a single or bottom deck in the transport guide)
- Width: 750–800 mm
- Steps: 450 mm tread to each 100 mm rise
- Cleats: 40–50 mm wide at 300 mm centres
- Flat platform at the top: at least 1600 mm (the transport guide) or at least 1 m (Agriculture Victoria)
- Overall length: at least 3.5 m to rise 1.2 m
- Side wall height: 1700 mm for cattle
There is an Australian Standard for ramps and forcing yards, AS 5340:2020. WorkSafe Victoria directs owners to design to it. It is voluntary and paywalled, and I have not quoted figures from it here because I have not read it — if you are building a ramp a contractor will be working to it and it is worth asking.
Fence and gate heights
Yard and race fences: 1.7–2 m in the Queensland manual, though Agriculture Victoria's small-herd plan uses 1.5 m. Both are government sources and they disagree; 1.5 m is a minimum for genuinely quiet stock and 1.7 m is the safer build. Calf race sides sit at 1150 mm.
Gates, from Queensland: receiving gateway 3 m minimum for under a hundred head, forcing yard gates 2.5–3 m, race gates 1.8–2.1 m, general gates 2.5 m. Agriculture Victoria adds a detail worth designing in: forcing yard gates should be able to swing through up to 300 degrees.
Where the yard goes
Siting is decided once and regretted for a long time. The published guidance is consistent:
- Build on a 1–2 per cent slope so the working area drains
- Orient so prevailing wind does not blow dust from the close-working yards over the race or the house
- Provide all-weather vehicle access — the day you need a truck is rarely a dry one
- Get water, and ideally power, to the yard
- Shade over holding areas, sun on the working yards
The behavioural rule that matters most is about light. Queensland puts it plainly: cattle move towards light, and forcing them into dark or heavily shaded areas is difficult. WorkSafe Victoria adds the corollary — even diffused lighting, minimal shadows across the race, and no bright sun in the animals' eyes at the point you need them to walk forward.
You will also be told to run cattle uphill, or downhill, depending on who is talking. I could not find an authoritative Australian source specifying a flow direction, so treat that one as opinion.
Escape gaps are not optional
Every enclosure a person works in needs a way out that does not involve climbing. Queensland specifies manways preferably 400 mm wide with an opening not exceeding 500 mm, covered by a spring-loaded blank door and hung to open into the working yard, provided in common traffic areas and in the forcing pen. The transport guide gives personal access gates at 600 mm with slam-shut catches, and emergency exits ideally 500 mm so stock cannot follow you through.
No source I found specifies a maximum spacing between manways, so do not let anyone tell you there is a rule. The workable test is whether you can reach one from wherever you might be standing when something goes wrong.
Worth knowing where this sits legally: WorkSafe Victoria frames yard safety as a duty under the Occupational Health and Safety Act — you must make the yard safe to work in so far as is reasonably practicable — but the dimensions themselves are recommendations rather than statutory minimums. Escape routes, they say, must not require jumping over, under or through railings.
Marking it out on the ground
Before anything is concreted, peg it and walk it. String lines and star pickets cost almost nothing and will find the mistake that a drawing hides.
- Peg the race first, not the yards. It is the fixed dimension everything else serves — and put it where the truck can reach the ramp end.
- Set the ramp off the race and check a truck can actually get square to it, then reverse out.
- Add the forcing pen at 3.5 m wide with its angled side feeding the race entry.
- Size the holding yard from your mob at 2 m² per head, and put it where cattle arrive from the paddock.
- Walk the whole route yourself, at cattle pace, looking at what an animal sees: shadows, gaps, a gate that opens into the path, sun in the eyes at the race entry.
- Stand in each pen and find your way out. If there isn't one, move a panel now while it is only string.
What the numbers do not tell you
Two things worth saying about the sources. The Queensland manual is the most complete Australian reference by a distance, and it was published in 2006 — the engineering is sound but it predates the current ramp standard. And nothing in any of it accounts for the one variable that matters most on a small place: how often you handle your cattle. Quiet, regularly handled stock will work through a modest yard that would be dangerous with cattle that see people twice a year.
Build for the cattle you have on the worst day, not the good one. Then handle them often enough that the worst day stops arriving.
If you have not settled on what to build yet, the companion piece on what a small herd genuinely needs and what it costs in 2026 covers the components and prices rather than the dimensions.