Electric fencing advice needed

homstedinmyhead · #1 03/13/11, 08:34 PM

I have 15 acres id like to fence. 2 acres are vegetables and I need to keep deer out, the rest is to keep sheep and goats in. I will be using portable netting within the fence to rotate the animals so I guess I don't need the most secure fencing for the perimeter.
There seem to be a lot of options out there and I'm a bit lost. What are the cheapest most effective options? I'm especially worried about the deer we have herds of them eating everything they see around the clock. my neighbor says they roughed up her kid for his lunch money.
Hi tensile? Regular? Wood, metal, fiberglass posts? How many strand are effective? How high?
Any tips, advice, or anecdotes will be much appreciated.
Thanks

Spotted Owl · #2 03/13/11, 09:56 PM

We run 7 strand hi tensile. To about 60". Wood post 15'. Keeps the deer and elk out and the goats and beef in. To rotate short fiber push rods and single strand to keep the stock where you want it. The best fencer you can afford and ground it very very well.

Owl

ghmerrill · #3 03/13/11, 10:23 PM

I did some fencing for our sheep and goat just a few weeks ago, and have a bunch more to do. My recommendations are to get a real good charger.... At least one rated for 100 miles. You might not have that much fencing, but you need a charger that packs that kind of punch to make sheep and goats respect it. Before I upgraded our charger, three animals were constantly getting through it. Our new charger puts out 12,000 volts, and is 6 jules. Volts are the ouch factor to the fence, jules are the ability of the charger to keep the fence hot when shorts occur.

As far as spacing, I put the fence wire real close together at the bottom. Probably 4"-the wire closest the ground is not hot, then the next one is, then the next one is not, alternating like that for the first 32", then went to 8" between wires, all hot. The non hot wires I have grounded, so if one of the animals tries to get through, they get zapped.
I have blackbelly sheep, and they are escape artists, and hard to catch, so I would rather go over built than under built like I did the first time around. When I can do the back 6 acres of our place, I'm going to do high tensile hot wire, 6' tall to keep the deer out, using wood posts. Fiberglass is just too hard to get- I would have to order them, which would cost a fortune in shipping. Unfortunately, I have to do things a bit at a time as income allows, so pressure treated wood posts that I can get locally are what I'm building with.

watcher · #4 03/14/11, 10:17 AM

IMO, you should NEVER use electric fence as your only premier/containment fence. Power goes out, batteries go bad, tree branches fall across and short fences, etc. All of which means you have nothing but a little bitty bit of wire to hold the critter's in.

Put up a real fence then use electric to keep the critters from getting close enough to damage it.

As for deer. You have two options either a tall fence (think 6-8 feet) or a double fence (too wide to jump both but close enough they can't land between them.

ghmerrill · #5 03/14/11, 11:19 AM

I would have to disagree on electric for perimeter fence. After a Short time, the animals learn to stay away from it, and even with the power off, it contains them. the key is training- a hot charger, and wires close enough together that they can't get through without getting zapped on the face are the two key factors. If something falls on your fence, woven, or electric, it opens a way for escape. With electric, the animals learn a boundary, and are probably less likely to challenge it than with physical containment fences.

Randy Rooster · #6 03/14/11, 11:38 AM

I keep deer out of my large garden with a battery operated electric fence - all the components bought from premier fence. I have 3 seperate poly twines running around my garden - tallest is about 6 feet and the other 2 evenly divided below that one. I have the poly twines mounted on 6 foot steel t posts via the little doo dads that you mount on the posts to hold the twine - also from premier.

Before putting up my fence I couldnt keep the deer from ruining the garden. Since putting it up it has been almost 100% effective at keeping them out - every few months I will see where a stray deer has gotten in via their hoof prints, but Ive not seen any damage in years.

watcher · #7 03/14/11, 12:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ghmerrill

I would have to disagree on electric for perimeter fence. After a Short time, the animals learn to stay away from it, and even with the power off, it contains them. the key is training- a hot charger, and wires close enough together that they can't get through without getting zapped on the face are the two key factors. If something falls on your fence, woven, or electric, it opens a way for escape. With electric, the animals learn a boundary, and are probably less likely to challenge it than with physical containment fences.

I speak from experience with tons of critters and many different types of chargers (remember the old units with the 'flasher'?). We always use electric fence inside our perimeter fencing, either attached to the same post or placed on smaller post 2' inside the 'real' fence. I can tell you if the hot wire is off for a even a couple of hours the critters (horses, goats, pigs etc.) will ignore the formerly electric fence.

I've seen horses with their heads between the strands of the formerly electric fence to reach the grass on the other side within 30 mins of me unplugging the charger. I've seen goats happily grazing between the electric fence and the woven wire when the battery in the solar charger died. Found one of our hogs on the front porch one evening when the son failed to turn the electric fence back on after feeding the critters.

If you have any doubt try turning your fence off for a few hours. But you might want to keep an eye on your critters during that time because unless your critters are different than all the ones I've dealt with they are going to be getting out.

edmonds · #8 03/14/11, 12:32 PM

We use electric perimeter fencing for goats, cows, horse and it works fine for us. Get the most powerful charger you can, teach the animals that it hurts when they touch it, and keep the grass off as much as possible (mowing and/or herbicide). But don't expect electric fencing to keep a buck/ram away from a potential mate.

As for deer, I have a friend who could not keep deer out of his garden until he went to an 8' field fence by stacking two 4' fences on top of each other. I had been using a 5' electric fence baited with peanut butter, which seemed to work well until last year. This year I plan to try a strand of hot tape about 3' to the outside of my current fence to create a double fence. Dogs can also work well for keeping deer away, depending on the dog.

ghmerrill · #9 03/14/11, 03:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by watcher

I speak from experience with tons of critters and many different types of chargers (remember the old units with the 'flasher'?). We always use electric fence inside our perimeter fencing, either attached to the same post or placed on smaller post 2' inside the 'real' fence. I can tell you if the hot wire is off for a even a couple of hours the critters (horses, goats, pigs etc.) will ignore the formerly electric fence.

I've seen horses with their heads between the strands of the formerly electric fence to reach the grass on the other side within 30 mins of me unplugging the charger. I've seen goats happily grazing between the electric fence and the woven wire when the battery in the solar charger died. Found one of our hogs on the front porch one evening when the son failed to turn the electric fence back on after feeding the critters.

If you have any doubt try turning your fence off for a few hours. But you might want to keep an eye on your critters during that time because unless your critters are different than all the ones I've dealt with they are going to be getting out.

We have had two heavy snow storms in the last month that took out the power and the power was out yesterday for about 12 hours due to heavy wind downing trees in several areas here. My sheep and goat are all still here. These are blackbelly sheep- not cuddly, friendly farm sheep. My previous electric fence would not and did not hold them. After spending quite a bit of time learning about electric fencing, and re doing ours correctly, there are absolutely no problems. The key to electric fencing is:

wire spacing- close enough that the animal cannot get its head through.
alternate grounded wires between your hot wires.

Properly installed, good charger- do your grounding right, and pay attention to the volts AND jules that your charger puts out. Solar chargers might put out high volts, but next to nothing for jules. If you are going too keep animals that are hard to fence, like sheep and goats, or keep out predators, you are fooling yourself if you dont get a charger that has high volts and jules.

Do your fence right, and the animals won't go near the fence after a couple of times testing it.

time · #10 03/16/11, 01:02 AM

I use high tensile. I made my corners metal, concreted 3' deep very solid. Alternated hot and ground wires. The reason for the very stout corners is they hold all tension on my fence. Line posts are 1/4" fibreglass spaced 30'. Line posts do very little. It reduces fencing costs considerably to reduce the line post needs by using very good corners and high tensile.

My horses will not go near the fence. I sometime unplug it for several weeks. I don't worry about power outage. My fence is normaly on 24/7 and unless critters learn that it is sometimes off, they will not test it. Once they learn it is off periodicly they will test it often.

I think a fence to hold deer out would need to be at least 8' high.