iDRY Vacuum Kilns

Sponsors:

Electric Fence

Started by Raider Bill, November 02, 2012, 02:56:53 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Raider Bill

Maybe putting in some electric fence to graze my 2 cows. One is getting pretty close to the freezer but where they are the grass is sparse and over grazed. Mine is pretty thick and never been grazed on. Also it's not really possible to grain feed just mine to finish him off where they are now.

I'd say there is 3-4 acres MOL and a small pond plus it won't take much to bring water to a trough if I need to.

How close should the metal posts go? Thinking 2 runs of barbed wire and power the bottom one which I suppose will be 18-24 inches off the ground or should I power the top run?

Figure a solar powered box.

This picture is about 1/4 of the area but will give you a idea what it looks like although it has filled in a lot more now. The 2 red cows in the other pix are the ones I will be putting in there.



  

 
The First 70 years of childhood is always the hardest.

clww

I'd go to Tractor Supply and get a solar powered 16-mile box. I'd electrify both strands, and I'd space the posts 8-10 feet apart.
Many Stihl Saws-16"-60"
"Go Ask The Other Master Chief"
18-Wheeler Driver

woodsteach

We run A LOT of electric fence.  For temporary fence we use a high quality polybraid "wire" and "pigtail" posts every 25-30 steps (I'm 6'5" and my kids are... kid height)  we now get all of our fencing at powerflex.com ..or something like that.  it is more $$ but we have done the local tractor/farm stores and that stuff just doesn't hold up for our use.

I wouldn't elec. barbed wire.  why?? just because, no real good reason other than if I'm crossing it and get a leg hooked and zapped ... no thanks.

Brand X Swing Mill, JD 317 Skidloader, MS460 & 290, the best family a guy could ever dream of...all provided by God up above.  (with help from our banker ; ) )

WildDog

Bill I second what woodsteach said. I like to educate them to a hot tape/wire for a couple of days before leaving a secure paddock. I am about to do the same for 14hd going into a partly fenced paddock I've got in town, next week.
If you start feeling "Blue" ...breath    JD 5510 86hp 4WD loader Lucas 827, Pair of Husky's 372xp, 261 & Stihl 029

Norm

I go 5 paces or yards for mine, just use regular electric fence wire and make them both hot. No need for a trough if you've got a pond for water. Get the highest rated one for the fencer, bigger is better in this case.

I like my steaks cut 1 1/2" thick.  ;D

Chuck White

I'd suggest you make both wires hot!

If all you have is barbed wire, still make both of them hot!

I think barbed wire may have a little edge over the smooth wire in that current flows on the outside of the wire and there is more surface area on barbed wire than there is on smooth wire, so therefore, more current.
~Chuck~  Cooks Cat Claw sharpener and single tooth setter.  2018 Chevy Silverado and 2021 Subaru Ascent.
With basic mechanical skills and the ability to read you can maintain a Woodmizer  LT40!

pigman

Bill, one of your "cows" appears to  not be a cow. I can't see his eyes to tell if he is a bull or steer. Also, I agree not to use barb wire. The barbs are not necessary and can be dangerous for humans. I just put enough posts to keep the wire the correct height.
Things turn out best for people who make the best of how things turn out.

hackberry jake

Subscribed, I have a hungry hungry horse that has demolished an acre in a month. I have grass, just not enough fence.
https://www.facebook.com/TripleTreeWoodworks

EZ Boardwalk Jr. With 20hp Honda, 25' of track, and homemade setworks. 32x18 sawshed. 24x40 insulated shop. 30hp kubota with fel. 1978 Massey ferguson 230.

fishpharmer

Seems like a horse eats more grass than a cow. 
Built my own band mill with the help of Forestry Forum. 
Lucas 618 with 50" slabber
WoodmizerLT-40 Super Hydraulic
Deere 5065E mfwd w/553 loader

The reason a lot of people do not recognize opportunity is because it usually goes around wearing overalls looking like hard work. --Tom A. Edison

Al_Smith

Posts are usually about a rod apart ,15 feet more or less .Fire up both strands ,smooth wire .I forget exactly what gauge galvanized fence wire is ,odd like 17 but it's not very expensive .

After they get zapped a couple times even though they are cattle and stupid they get the message .They soon figure out in spite of how green the grass looks on the other side of the fence not to go there .

WildDog

QuoteSeems like a horse eats more grass than a cow.

Fish, about half as much again, cows as ruminents camp and chew their cud, horses just seem to keep eating.
We use a livestock carrying capacity rating called DSE (Dry Sheep Equivellant) a dry sheep being a 40 kilogram wether. Generally 1 cow  = 10 DSE, a lactating heifer still growing = up to 15 DSE.

QuoteAfter they get zapped a couple times even though they are cattle and stupid they get the message .They soon figure out in spite of how green the grass looks on the other side of the fence not to go there .

In 2006 during the drought I issued a permit to a drover for 600 cows on the highway, they had been cell grazed with hot wires and when on the road wouldn't cross the white line on the bitumen for a couple of days.
If you start feeling "Blue" ...breath    JD 5510 86hp 4WD loader Lucas 827, Pair of Husky's 372xp, 261 & Stihl 029

Raider Bill

Cow, steer I'm a city boy......

2 strands of smooth wire both powered up, posts about 15  ft apart thanks!

Not sure I'm going to get it done this trip but now I have a plan.

Any tips on stretching or support?
The First 70 years of childhood is always the hardest.

fishpharmer

Thanks for the info Wilddog, that makes sense.

Me (and my cows) are electric fence believers.  The cows respect two strands of smooth wire on 20 foot spaced posts across flat ground.  May not be necessary, when I first put the electric fences up I put orange flagging on it so the could see it better.  The flagging wasn't my idea, read it somewhere.
Built my own band mill with the help of Forestry Forum. 
Lucas 618 with 50" slabber
WoodmizerLT-40 Super Hydraulic
Deere 5065E mfwd w/553 loader

The reason a lot of people do not recognize opportunity is because it usually goes around wearing overalls looking like hard work. --Tom A. Edison

sandhills

If you use the smooth wire and aren't doing that long of runs (anything less than 1/2 a mile) you can pull it tight by hand and it won't take more than a "T" post to tie too on the ends.  If you want it to be permanent you just as well put in good corner posts.  We regularly put in miles of it every fall for grazing corn stalks after harvest and just use a single wire but it also gets picked up every year.

Don_Papenburg

I use  the 3/4 " fiberglass round  post  to make corners . One is driven in upright  and then the brace post on about a 45degree angle and bolted with a U shaped piece of galvenized metal (18 ga.)     Bottom of U goes on the upright  and bolts hold the brace post .   Use one solar unit for each strand .  I need that for keeping the coons out of sweet corn, or one BIG electric on both strands
Frick saw mill  '58   820 John Deere power. Diamond T trucks

DDDfarmer

The best thing to do is build your fence with good quality wire and insulators.  Then a high quality fencer, our main line fencer is a gallager 35 mile high voltage.  If we disconect the long distance runs and just leave the barnyards connected the animals try not to get within 3 feet of the fence.

Ground faults are easy to find, follow your ears the snap can be heard quite a distance.

If you are using a hammer and hit the wrong nail,  touch the wire..... the pain in your thumb is long gone. smiley_thumbsup
Treefarmer C5C with cancar 20 (gearmatic 119) winch, Husky 562xp 576xp chainsaws

Ernie

Here in NZ we use a lot of electric fencing.  All I use for my cattle is one wire/tape and enough standards to keep the hot wire at about the right height.  The most important thing in electric fencing is to make sure you have a good earth?ground.  I drove 4 6 foot stainless pipes into a damp area about six feet apart hooked them together with stainless wire and connected the earth side of my energizer up to it with stainless wire.  I did that about 30 years ago and have never had an earthing problem.  Do not energize barbed wire, if an animal gets hooked up in it, it is not a pretty sight.  I use a large mains powered unit and have 7500 volts about a mile from the unit.

I prefer electrics as they are fast and easy to erect and take down if I need to drag a log over the fenceline and the stock learn very quickly not to touch.  If you are doing a fair bit, I would recommend as many isolating switches as possible, make tracing faults a lot easier.

You are not building a physical barrier like you would with posts and barbed wire.  Strength is not important, electrical soundness is.

This website has some pretty good information

http://www.gallagher.co.nz/


A very wise man once told me . Grand children are great, we should have had them first

chevytaHOE5674

I run 4 strands of either barbless cable or polyrope, I alternate them (-)(+)(-)(+). Having the ground on every other strand as well as the earth means that the fence will work good no matter what the soil is like.

Ianab

Agree with Ernie here.

We had a BIG Gallager unit powering the fences at our farm, and with those design of the earthing and main feed wires needs to be a bit more scientific. Poor connections on a main feed will start arcing and burn through the wire quite quickly. Ours would sound an alarm if it detected a serious short, but a dead short you could pick up as the main feed wires would pulse with the current going through them.

But to keep a couple of cows in an acre of grazing, a little solar or battery unit will keep plenty of volts on a single wire.

When wintering cows you would run the portable fence across a paddock and break feed a new strip each day. The cows would get quite good at "limbo", and be down on their bellies reaching as far under the fence as they could, to get a head start on next days grass. But they knew exactly how close the could get to the wire before it "bit" them.

Once you get them trained to an electric fence, they wont touch it, even when it's powered off. Or at least it takes a couple of days before one gets brave enough to test if it's still on.

Just don't put a cow and calf on opposite sides of the fence, then they have no respect for it.

Ian
Weekend warrior, Peterson JP test pilot, Dolmar 7900 and Stihl MS310 saws and  the usual collection of power tools :)

red oaks lumber

electric fence just helps you sleep at night. if the animals have plenty of food and water your animals wont even test the fence.even during breeding season 1 small wire keeps 2500 lb bulls on their own side of the fence.
the experts think i do things wrong
over 18 million b.f. processed and 7341 happy customers i disagree

Raider Bill

Quote from: Don_Papenburg on November 04, 2012, 08:37:36 PM
I use  the 3/4 " fiberglass round  post  to make corners . One is driven in upright  and then the brace post on about a 45degree angle and bolted with a U shaped piece of galvenized metal (18 ga.)     Bottom of U goes on the upright  and bolts hold the brace post .   Use one solar unit for each strand .  I need that for keeping the coons out of sweet corn, or one BIG electric on both strands

Don,

Do the 3/4 posts you mention here come with the side supports? I assume you don't pound them in the same as a T-post?
The First 70 years of childhood is always the hardest.

Al_Smith

The funniest thing I ever saw involved my father , a 250 pound hampshire barrow and a hot fence .

Dear old dad used to smack those hogs between  the eyes  with a 4 pound hammer to stun them then slit their throat when they went down .About the time he straddled that hog the pot licker got up and ran the old man ran right into the fence .

He got out of the fence ,went and got a 30:30 and that ended that nonsense . :D

POSTON WIDEHEAD

Quote from: Al_Smith on November 05, 2012, 10:03:13 AM
The funniest thing I ever saw involved my father , a 250 pound hampshire barrow and a hot fence .

Dear old dad used to smack those hogs between  the eyes  with a 4 pound hammer to stun them then slit their throat when they went down .About the time he straddled that hog the pot licker got up and ran the old man ran right into the fence .

He got out of the fence ,went and got a 30:30 and that ended that nonsense . :D

Soooo, that's where the joke came from..."Why did the Framer shoot his Fence?"  :D
The older I get I wish my body could Re-Gen.

ely

my advice to the electric fence is.... do all stretching and supporting BEFORE you hook up the charger. :o

clww

Many Stihl Saws-16"-60"
"Go Ask The Other Master Chief"
18-Wheeler Driver

Don_Papenburg

R.B.  The 3/4" post is round and smooth very strong . I made a pipe driver to pound them into the ground ,same as one would install a Tpost .  The support brackets would have to be obtained localy most sheetmetal shops could make them out of drop offs. Mine are about 4" wide and 8to10" long and then i bent them around the post .  I then drilled 1/4" holes to bolt them around the post .  I also pound the supports post in at an angle . Starting first almost upright for a few inches then tip it down to aprox.45degree angle  and finish driving it .
I have two bolts on either side of the angled post , four bolts total. then two bolts close to the upright post to secure that . 
   
   *                  ( Bolt pattern )
          *
       *
                        *
                     *
   *
Frick saw mill  '58   820 John Deere power. Diamond T trucks

DR_Buck

Bill,

I have 40 acres of pasture enclosed with about 70,000 feet of electric fence wire.  Post are steel 'T' post 15 ft apart.  Post cost can add up but worth it in the end.   As others have said don't use barbed wire.  First of all you NEVER want to electrify barbed wire.   Think of the consequences if you get caught up in it.   smiley_furious3      Another reason not to use barbed mixed with electric is deer jumping the fence can snag the barbed onto the electric, grounding it out and then your whole fence is dead and cows get out.   This I have 1st hand experience with.

Again, because of deer, try and get the new style unbreakable insulators, not the hard plastic yellow ones.  I get mine from tractor supply. They are a deep yellow, almost orange in color and are flexable. Otherwise, deer caught on the wires can break them, again grounding out the fence.
Been there, done that.   Never got caught [/b]
Retired and not doing much anymore and still not getting caught

Al_Smith

Deer and fence just don't mix .

chevytaHOE5674

Knock on wood I haven't had trouble with cows/horses/donkeys messing with the fence in many years, but the darn deer will run right through it and knock it all down quite often.

Riggs

If you really want to test your fence, try fencing in a few goats....
Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.~Ernest Hemingway

Norwood ML 26

Al_Smith

Even a woven wire fence they get hung up in it ,thrash around and usually break a front leg .You either get the dead deer out of the fence or let the buzzards have it .Couple months all that's left is a few bones to get chewed on by the field mice .

The mice feed the owls ,red fox and redtail hawks  so it's natures way of recycling .Been working fine since the beginning of time .

chevytaHOE5674

There was a time that we had a few goats fenced in, and as long as there was plenty for them to eat they rarely went near the fence.

Problem with deer wrecking the fence is that I have to check it and fix the fence everytime they go through it. Which has probably only been a handful of times in as many years as I can remember... Until this year I've fixed fence more times than I can count on all my fingers and toes from the dear running through it.

DR_Buck

Quote from: chevytaHOE5674 on November 09, 2012, 10:34:30 AM
Problem with deer wrecking the fence is that I have to check it and fix the fence everytime they go through it. Which has probably only been a handful of times in as many years as I can remember... Until this year I've fixed fence more times than I can count on all my fingers and toes from the dear running through it.

Time to sight in the rifle.  ;D
Been there, done that.   Never got caught [/b]
Retired and not doing much anymore and still not getting caught

blackfoot griz

A week or so, about 50 elk (no legal bulls in the bunch tho  >:() passed through at a trot and hammered a 50 yard section of my fence which is 4 strands of barbed with the top strand is 12 gauge smooth wire and hot.

2 strands broke and a bunch got twisted up...staples pulled.  What is annoying is that there was a wide open gate nearby...happens all the time.

Elk are tough on any fence!

WildDog

I've  made semi permanent strainer/corner posts by:

1. get a piece of pipe/RHS about 18in, angled on the ends,
2. on each end weld a 6in piece of pipe/RHS that can slip neatly over star pickets
3 hammer a star picket down through each one, one end of the brace will sit at ground level and the other about half way up the post (mount insulators on this one.

You can play about with the lengths of pipe welded on the brace to sit it higher or lower, if the star picket used as a brace is likely to short the fence out, a piece of rural poly water pipe slipped down the psot will insulate it.

Appologies for my description (I am having trouble with my new camera, the pic file size are all too big for FF)
If you start feeling "Blue" ...breath    JD 5510 86hp 4WD loader Lucas 827, Pair of Husky's 372xp, 261 & Stihl 029

SwampDonkey

Quote from: Al_Smith on November 09, 2012, 06:57:16 AM
Deer and fence just don't mix .

Try a moose. :D Sheesh, looked out this morning at daylight. Seen tracks around the apple trees and up to the steps. Now what was that, the neighbor's dog? Went out. A moose had been around last night checking things over. Don't need to fence my moose. :D Might need to fence like Warbird though, to keep them out. :)
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

Al_Smith

I've only seen two moose in  my life .They were wading in the river in Yellow Stone park .They were rather large .

SwampDonkey

Things are bigger in the north. ;D Take the northern woodland buffalo, much larger than their prairie cousin. ;) That Wood Buffalo Park is way up north.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

Al_Smith

Oh we have buffalo allright and those that keep them have very sturdy fences as well .These are not on the home where the buffalo roam though .----and buffalo chips are not to be confused with taco chips .

sandhills

There has been a few people with buffalo around here, if you've ever heard the saying "good fences make good neighbors", buffalo will take that to a whole new level  ;D.  When they decide to leave and walk through all the other neighbor's fences they seem to disappear and usually there's no questions asked by the owners of said buffalos.

Thank You Sponsors!