At current prices, fencing Southern Belle's two-acre pasture will cost:
$100 for 3/4 miles of 14 gauge, galvanized steel wire for a three-strand, electric fence.
$60 for 200, 2" plastic insulators.
$350 for 68 new "T" posts on 20' centers.
$150 for a 12V fence energizer.
$150 for a deep cycle battery
$20 for an 8', galvanized ground-rod and clamp
$40 for gate hardware.
In round numbers, about $900 in materials for a perimeter fence that will probably keep cattle in. Early training of the cattle to respect electric fences goes a long way toward keeping them in the enclosure. Never letting them run out of feed, water or salt is also a big deal.
Is SB's pasture in a location far from the house & normal AC electric hookup?
ReplyDeleteConventional wisdom used to be that it was better to have a 'plug-in' energizer, even if you had to run a lead out wire a half- mile to the fence than to use a solar/battery unit...but it has been 30+ yrs since we started building electrified HT fencing here on our place.
I second that. solars never last long. you can also have 3 weeks of overcast days and no charging.
Deletealthough if cattle get a mind to, theyll get out regardless of pain.
we have both on 5 strand high tensile, 2 hot strands.
God bless ya and good luck! I've looked at it, realized I don't have the stones!
ReplyDelete"electrified HT fencing" is high tension?
ReplyDelete"High Tensile" strength wire. Really saves on the fence posts for long straight runs.
DeleteIt is a pain to work with. Lots of spring-back. Letting go of a stretched length causes it to re-coil. If you are near the attached end, the sharp, cut end approaches your face (and eyes) at a high rate of speed.
Having grown up patching and erecting barbed wire fences... I find HT to be infinitely less a pain, faster to erect, easier to maintain, less expensive to erect, and much less dangerous to both man and beast.
DeleteAs mine was always electrified with a high-voltage/low impedance energizer (generally pushing 8500 volts... so high 'pain potential'), I never felt the need to crank the tension up to the prescribed 220 psi... I only cranked it up enough to eliminate sag... and on long straight runs, I would only have a T-post every 100 ft or so. Most of this farm is fenced with two strands of HT wire at 18" and 30". Over 25 years, there were only a handful of times that the cattle 'got out', and those were mainly the result of someone turning the fencer off to make repairs and forgetting to turn it back on. The 'psychological barrier' that electrification provided was sufficient that, even if the fence were 'off' for days, the cattle rarely, if ever, challenged it.
It would probably be overkill for SB, but the last fence energizer we purchased came with a remote that would allow us to 'turn off/turn on" the energizer from anywhere on the farm - sometimes we'd be a mile away from the barn, and it was a real pain to have to drive or walk all the way back to unplug the energizer and make our way back in order to effect repairs. The remote also provided a voltage read-out, and directional short-finder, so that you could track down spots where insulators were broken and the wire was shorting out on t-posts, or wire was down on the ground, etc.
DeleteI would recommend 2 ground rods from experience
ReplyDeleteYou can never have too many ground rods. We have 6 8-ft ground rods, driven, at 10-ft spacings so that they are mostly under the dripline of the barn... any little rain 'waters' the grounding field. Also have a series of 6 ground rods driven/lain in the bottom of a trench receiving runoff from the barn wash stall and tackroom utility sink - If we get into drought conditions, I just run some water down the drains and it percolates out through the fenestrated drain tile (laid with fenestrations 'down') buried in that trench over the ground rods.
DeleteTo further stiffen up my fence, mostly to keep the deer from going through it, I went to the lumber yard and bought the new re-rod called Gator Bar which is made with fiberglass . I cut it to the length from top to bottom wire and attached it with zip ties with two between the T posts. It does not touch the ground . Cheap, quick and really stiffens up the fence. ---ken
ReplyDeleteI have used electric fencing for dairy cattle years ago. Mostly had one strand on top of old stone walls for permanent pastures and I used one strand of string on3/8 inch fiber glass stakes for moveable strip grazing on second cutting hay meadows. Never had any problem. We trained heifers by bringing them from this calf barn on a lead touching them to the hot fence and watching them for a bit. The only problem was getting then thru the gate, back to the barn in fall!
ReplyDeleteThat was electric string with conductors woven in it!
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