Fence....particularly moooooocows!

WARRIORWELDING

WARRIORWELDING

Owner opperator Of WarriorWelding LLC.
Joined
Jan 6, 2008
Location
Chillin, Hwy 64 Mocksville NC
I am now ready to embark on the second phase of my self employed endeavor. Farming on a small scale. I'm monitoring the garden thread and dabbling a bit in the green stuff.

Looking for opinions on fencing for four legged hamburger. I've been around a few varieties. The biggest exposure has been to the worn out under maintained type. Barb wire, single strand electric, and all manner of coble in-between.

So, Preferred type with reasons????

Driven post or concrete? Tamped dirt? (done plenty of them too)

I have a tractor driven auger but I am considering driven post with substantial corners with telephone poles and High tensile electric wire.

Spacing?
T-post? I have rolling terrain so I'm concerned with tension pulling them up in the low areas.
Pipe fence? I know welder guy. ;)

For the record I am completely opposed to woven wire or any grid type panel.

Pressure wont be huge as far as numbers, not looking to be a feed lot mud hole.
Probably have at least one Jack mixed in with the beef. Absolutely no horses, I don't care how much the daughter cries.
 
High tensile electric, 3 or 4 strands depending on spacing. Don't skimp out on the charger.

Biggest thing will be getting your corners braced well, You can T post the rest every 16ft or so.

We use telephone poles/big cedar posts for corners, then round 3 or 4in post every 16ft. As they rot some have been replaced with T post.

You really don't need to crank the wire that tight, i wouldn't worry about pulling the T post out of the ground.

Reason would be our cows are electric broke and i currently have them grazing a hay field with 1 poly wire waist high. I wouldn't go out of town with that setup, but it has let me feed less hay and sell more this winter.
 
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Something like this,
 

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83oldyoda4x4 said:
High tensile electric, 3 or 4 strands depending on spacing. Don't skimp out on the charger.

Biggest thing will be getting your corners braced well, You can T post the rest every 16ft or so.

We use telephone poles/big cedar posts for corners, then round 3 or 4in post every 16ft. As they rot some have been replaced with T post.

You really don't need to crank the wire that tight, i wouldn't worry about pulling the T post out of the ground.

Reason would be our cows are electric broke and i currently have them grazing a hay field with 1 poly wire waist high. I wouldn't go out of town with that setup, but it has let me feed less hay and sell more this winter.
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Kinda where I'm headed I think. As for the single strand, my grandpas fence dwindled to that over the years. Kept most all but the young calves in. He used 3/8 rod drive in the ground with old glass pop bottles on top of some as insulators! Cheap, but we walked it weekly to check for brush, and mess the fence couldn't cut with the electricity. Took a few hours but I was with my hero and outside.
 
Helped my brother do his pasture. We rented the skid steer post pounder attachment. Worked awesome. We still had to use the chainsaw and put a point on each post. The soil wouldn’t allow a flat one to drive. We’d do one wooden post, skip several feet and drive another. Then we came back and filled in the gaps with metal pickets. I believe it was like one wooden post and then two pickets. We did the corners high tensile and I believe it was a 4 wire. Hard part is keeping the fence line cleared so it doesn’t ground.
 
We bought some replacement heifers from a guy and he swears barbwire electrified. The barb helps get down to the skin fora good shock. IDK, but he had one of the skimpiest fences i have seen, 2 wires driven in on rod like you were saying.
 
In my younger days Before I graduated High School, and several years after, I worked with one of my best friends.(we have been friends since we were about 7 yrs old, and still are) We built miles of fencing. All 5 strand Barbed wire, All wooded post ( most posted had been treated, AND soaked on old oil) All posts were tamped in, All post ere 2' deep, corners were 4' and were braced. Corner post were most often power pole cut to length, and sometimes, RR ties. All wire was tight enough to make a musical note. I can still drive to the old farms, some still there and in use, and say "I helped build that fence"! Oh and we had a measuring stick to make sure all the spacing was uniform. We used a block and tackle that was made just for pulling barbed wire tight. As a matter of fact, I still own one of them, hemp rope and all! ;) All fences were straight as an arrow, thanks to the hundreds of feet of string that was pulled to make the line. "CA" never used electric, because with this style, there was no reason for it. Oh and all posts were capped by a pieces of sheet metal to keep the ends from absorbing water. Later years, most of the posts were "blacked" with a torch to water proof them.
OK it's been a long time, but that's what I remember of building pasture fencing.
GL
 
Loganwayne said:
Why are you against woven or panel fence? We have talked about fencing a few areas and I realize the start up cost is more but if I wanted to put goats or sheep or a pig i wouldn’t have to do anything special as the fence is already built for multiple animals
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You said the magic word. Goat. My wife sees that opportunity and I am doomed. All of our money will go toward useless fainting goats!

And seriously my compulsive self would go bananas keeping a woven fence clear. Not as easy to move, place, or.......I just don't like woven fence. I tore down a perfectly good chain link fence at my first house. I cant stand the look or feel of the border it creates. Might as well be a 10 foot panel in my head.
 
All I can tell is what my Grandpa did for his regular fence and they never got out.
Wood posts, 3 runs of barbed wire.
Same on another pasture, but he did have to add 1 run of electric. Don't remember why.
People don't realize how strong a cow really is. Truthfully, they can literally walk through about anything you put up.
 
Wood corner posts and then t posts every 100 feet. Fill in the rest with fiber glass. IMHO, if you REQUIRE (as in cows constantly out ect) more than two wires, you're doing it wrong. We keep around 50 Charolais cows and have for almost as long as I can remember. Most places are single wire. When we got the place it was mostly barbed wire and we have converted it all to just plain ol HT. Go to Virginia and get a charger.

Another thing, keep them comfortable in your corral. Leave it open and always keep some sweet feed in it. Will make it easier to load them. We never used shockers to move them. A "baccer stick" has always been just fine.
 
83oldyoda4x4 said:
High tensile electric, 3 or 4 strands depending on spacing. Don't skimp out on the charger.

Biggest thing will be getting your corners braced well, You can T post the rest every 16ft or so.

We use telephone poles/big cedar posts for corners, then round 3 or 4in post every 16ft. As they rot some have been replaced with T post.
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This pretty much how my dad, grandpa, and me have built fence. Except we have always ran 5 strands of barbwire and a 6th strand about 10" off from the ground that is hot. Corner and brace posts are locust or something treated. We have locust posts in the ground here that have been there over 50 years.

We keep cattle and goats. Cattle are fairly easy to keep in especially with a hot wire, if it is a temporary fence we usually just run 2 strands of hot barb wire on t-posts. Unless your planning to keep a bull that will be near other cattle, if love is in the air they will walk through about anything. If you plan on goats in the future and do not want wove wire I would go for at least 5 strands of hot barb wire, then plan on walking it at least every 3 days or so to check for grounded spots and plan on keeping it mowed off. We have 16 goats here but luckily our property is surrounded by other pasture and woods and the neighbors don't mind the goats hanging out on them too. They can go through or over 5 strands of barb wire no problem. A red Ryder bb gun works wonders for training them on where they can and can't go.
 
JSJJ388 said:
Wood corner posts and then t posts every 100 feet. Fill in the rest with fiber glass. IMHO, if you REQUIRE (as in cows constantly out ect) more than two wires, you're doing it wrong. We keep around 50 Charolais cows and have for almost as long as I can remember. Most places are single wire. When we got the place it was mostly barbed wire and we have converted it all to just plain ol HT. Go to Virginia and get a charger.

Another thing, keep them comfortable in your corral. Leave it open and always keep some sweet feed in it. Will make it easier to load them. We never used shockers to move them. A "baccer stick" has always been just fine.
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yep a bucket of sweet feed empty when they are used to it will move them just about anywhere you want to go......or a pocket full of cookies. A friends wife always had oatmeal Iced cookies. You talk about getting the tongue, they try to pull your coat pockets off.
 
When you bring the cows on your farm, put them in a corral with electric inside, to get them good and trained to electric fence. Once they have got some good shocks, you can keep them in paddocks with single strand.
 
Any body got opinions on tamped post?

And where to buy in quantity?

Holy "COW" this fence thing is gonna cost some denero.
 
83oldyoda4x4 said:
What soil you working with? Around here the red clay you can tamp down pretty well.

No idea on posts, like every thing they are through the roof.
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Crumbly sand clay mix they call buck tallow. It's greasy as shit wet. Doesn't pack well and will wash bad it left exposed on a slope.

My pasture is gonna need a lot of work in a few spots where thing have dies or rotted in the ground. I've lost count of the holes and unique washes because of the soil.

I actually found a 15 foot "drain" I could crawl through. I'm reckoning a stump rot and possibly a root system the water followed. With some of the washes if I had rock I'd wheel it instead. Nothing is steep but the water does some funky stuff. Our bottoms flood bad. We got 4 feet of sand in a big field the last time the creek got out.
 
Not saying it was the right way, but we only had electric single strand around our property for our cows growing up. We only had 4-5 at the most at a time. Probably had 6-8 acres fenced off, if I were to guess. We had good corner posts and just single drive in posts elsewhere.
 
WARRIORWELDING said:
Crumbly sand clay mix they call buck tallow. It's greasy as shit wet. Doesn't pack well and will wash bad it left exposed on a slope.

My pasture is gonna need a lot of work in a few spots where thing have dies or rotted in the ground. I've lost count of the holes and unique washes because of the soil.

I actually found a 15 foot "drain" I could crawl through. I'm reckoning a stump rot and possibly a root system the water followed. With some of the washes if I had rock I'd wheel it instead. Nothing is steep but the water does some funky stuff. Our bottoms flood bad. We got 4 feet of sand in a big field the last time the creek got out.
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We have one corner like that, buck tallow. We went out an extra post on the corner bracing so instead of 3 post we did 5. It held pretty good, definitely have to pick a good day to try and set the post. I also notice the post rot out about twice as fast in that soil, ours stays so wet.
 
83oldyoda4x4 said:
We have one corner like that, buck tallow. We went out an extra post on the corner bracing so instead of 3 post we did 5. It held pretty good, definitely have to pick a good day to try and set the post. I also notice the post rot out about twice as fast in that soil, ours stays so wet.
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Yep it seems to be soaked or bone dry!

I'm seriously considering telephone poles. Regular post are high enough. A fella a few miles up the road keeps his in with telephone pole corners. Not a lot of bracing. Spaces the poles I bet 50 yards in places with very few intermediate post.
Two strands high tensile electrified. He does light grading so I bet he bored and set them with a skid steer.
 
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