102 Western Live-stock Management 
easy access to the beam. The gate from the corral or 
chute to the scales should be placed just in front of the 
scales, and made about eight or ten feet wide. The gate 
may then be swung outward to meet the scale gate, and 
by fastening the two together a chute is formed direct 
from the corral to the scale-rack. Yet when the gates 
are closed and the scale removed, there is nothing to 
prevent easy access of wagons and teams to the scales. 
If the scale-rack is made rather high and with a gate at 
each end, a team and wagon may be driven through with- 
out removing the rack, but this arrangement is useful 
only in weighing small loads of grain; it cannot be utilized 
for loads as large as a load of hay. Cattle-racks are some- 
times made with the sides hinged at the bottom so that 
they may be dropped back far enough to allow a load of 
hay to drive through, but these racks are practically 
never strong enough to hold western cattle. 
Special attention should be given the arrangement 
of the corrals, so that the cattle may be brought to the 
scales with the least amount of difficulty. Not only does 
running the cattle around the corral waste much time, but 
it likewise runs the flesh off the steers and causes shrinkage. 
If the corrals are so arranged that the cattle may be 
weighed without running them around or exciting them 
in any way, they will often weigh as much as five or ten 
pounds a head more than if weighed from corrals that re- 
quire a good deal of running to get them on the scales. 
A model arrangement of corrals, chutes, and scales is shown 
in Fig. 9. This system includes the good points in corral 
construction from various western ranches. 
