Fencing recommendation for calves

[cooper101]

I'm new to cattle, so go easy on me. I'm thinking of getting a few holstein bull calves from our neighbors and raising them on pasture. I have a small area that isn't currently fenced, so I'm starting with a blank slate. I like the idea of a 6-8 strand high tensile fence versus field fence because of cost and ease to put up, plus I already have a fence charger. But, I'm worried that a stranded fence like that won't keep young calves in if they can slip between the wires. Field fence might be better. Any thoughts or opinions as to which is best? I'm expecting that they would be butchered on the small side, so I wouldn't have to ever contain 1200 pound animals.

[COWS]

Well, read the posts above on sale barn calves and bottle calves, there is more information there than I can give about raising the calves. My only advice is to make steers of them first thing.

Concerning fence, if you have an electric fence and it is working properly, the calves are not going to slip between the wires, they will avoid the fence like poison. Six electrified wires is overkill. However, it's not a bad idea to have some barbed wire as a backup in case you lose power. I would invest in a digital display fence checker and see how much power is supposed to be there, doing this as soon as you put up the first hot wire. Later, if you don't have this high a reading, start looking for a short.

An electric fence needs a good ground. You should have a ground rod driven in the ground close to the fence charger. Farm supply or electrical supply places sell them. The rod is about 6 feet long and either copper coated or galvanized(zinc plated). The easy way to drive the ground rod in is to poke a hole in the ground by holding the rod in both hands, pull it out, pour water in the hole, drive it in again, repeat until it is fairly deep, then finish by driving it in with a big hammer.

A good fence would be a strand of barbed wire a few inches above the ground, a hot wire above that a few inches, like 6-8 inches apart, then another strand of barbed, another hot, and one strand of hot above that. A fence 40 inches high should be enough.

Think ahead about loading the calves to go to butcher or sale. If you have a shed with stalls and them trained to go in the stall, making chutes to lead them to a trailer is simpler. Arrange the chute so that they travel it part way when leaving the stall, then when loading have the trailer at one end of the chute and gates to keep them in the chute instead of going outside. There is a thread with pictures about this on here.

Good luck,

Cows

[Raymond James]

I have an Angus bull with too much time on his hands. Not enough girls to keep him tired. I need to enter him bull jumping contest as he easily clears the 5 foot tall fence it is a 4 foot woven wire with strand of barb wire on top.
Since I ran an electric fence 3 feet from the original fence I have not had any trouble. He has to get past the electric to be able to jump the original fence.

I trained my first sets of steers to walk into the trailer by parking the trailer in the pasture and feeding them corn out of the back then slowly moving the pan towards the front. They would go in to eat till the day they went in and I shut the door. I left it hooked to the truck the last week so after shutting them in I just needed to open the gate, get in the truck and drive them to the butcher.

I have sine moved to l grass/ hay so now I move them thru a pen from one pasture to another. Once they get in the small pen I shut it up , sort out what I am not taking then go get the truck and trailer. Once parked I open gates so that they go thru chute to get to the trailer. I have not had any issues getting them from the pen into the trailer with this. Though not as easy as having the trained to get in the trailer on there own.

I had two steers that got out and down the road a ways neighbor came to tell me he found them and had penned them up. He wasn't sure how we were going to get them loaded from there . I just took the trailer down , opened the back and was pushed assigned by the steers trying to get into get the corn.

[francismilker]

As far as calves and fencing go. I'm a fan of using an electric wire fence. However, I might add, don't do what once did and turned a passle of newly weined bottle bulls out from their confinement of calf hutches onto a paddock of grass when they've never been out before. Mine hit the ground running, bucking, and so proud to be out they never looked twice at the electric fence and I got them shut down after they'd drug the hot wire to shambles!!!!!

You might consider letting them out one at a time so's not to make them too zealous about running a foot race on their first outing.

[PackerBacker]

5 strands of barbed.

[sammyd]

We have used 3 strands of hot barbed wire with very good results. Let the animals in slowly as mentioned so they get used to it and they usually stay put.
Most of the pastures on my place are old feed lots and have field fence with a strand or two of barbed over that.
Let them get hungry though and all bets are off, have seen cattle blow through 6 strand high tensile when the feed got a little short.

[ramiller5675]

How big of an area are you thinking about fencing? If you are talking about a few acres, then a lot of your cost is going to be in building good stout corners and gate openings, so a high-tensile fence might not be as cheap as you first think.

The only calf-proof fencing I've ever seen is woven wire fencing (field fence). If you add in an offset hot wire around the perimeter, it will keep almost anything in and can also be easily subdivided into smaller grazing areas.

If you ever plan on getting other livestock besides cattle, a good tight woven wire fence will work for livestock like pigs, sheep, goats, etc., and it will keep animals like dogs or other predators out of the fenced area if you decide to get something like chickens or turkeys.

[opportunity]

I have had better luck with woven then I have with electric. I have had some that did not care if they got shocked they went though anyway. I know it was working I tried to go though it after them and it hurt..... I have redone all my fence with woven on the outside 4 feet high with two barbs above it's over 5 feet then on the inside I have five rows of barb with a rail along the top it's at about 5-5.5 feet high and so far it seems to stop everyone.

[arnie]

I have used what we call flags on an electric fence to get them trained to avoid the hot wire; hang aluminum soda can every 10 feet or so from the hot wire it also helps if the ground is wet like after a rain when you introduce them into the pasture most will stick there nose to check out the can and zap lesson learned after this a single or double strand will contain them .I have no personal experience with the high tensel fence but some neighbours have it electricfied holding big saddle horses includeing a stallion and it works for them others with a large pasture of cattle don't have the power on and it holds them in.most of my fence is 4-5 strands of barb wire .

[cooper101]

Thank you all for your responses. We raise pigs with electric and it works great. I have a method I use to train them and I've never lost one yet. I'm guessing that I could use a similar method to train calves, so I want to use high-tensile, but this has given me a lot to consider. Now I have to weigh what I want to do with what might be best. (I hate that.) Thanks!

[tab]

Do tell how you train your pigs! Many of us here are multi critter people.

We have woven fence for the cows, hadn't considered (yet) putting other critters in that area. Horses have electric tape. Been wondering if I could train the cow to that.

After watching a young steer clear a three foot fence eith a short run up, the electric stand off wire sounds good.

[Dixie Bee Acres]

I too would Luke to know how you trained your pigs to elective fence

[SueMc]

We use two strands of electric for hogs and cattle, lower to the ground for hogs. Everybody trains themselves to it. Everything seems to be smart enough not to get shocked more than a couple of times before they avoid it.
I swear though, I think our boar does know when the fence is off. Sometimes, not often, when the there's no clicking from the charger, he'll mouth the wire. I've plugged it back in while he's doing that to show him that touching the fence is unacceptable behavior.
It's not even taken very young pigs long to respect the fence. I do hate to hear something yell when it's been shocked (including me!)

The only animals to run through the electric around here are the deer. I have one 8 acre patch next to woods so had to do repairs a couple of times when the strands first went up. They seem to know where the fence is at now so just jump in to graze with the cattle.

[cooper101]

There are a few posts about training pigs on the pig forum.

My pig pens are about 2 acres with a 3 strand high tensile fence, 8, 16, 24 inches off the ground. I buy 4' orange plastic snow fence, cut the rolls in the half, and wrap the resulting 2' high snow fence around the outside of the wire, zip-tied to the wire. I start the pigs (40-50 pounders) in a small corner pen where two sides are the perimeter fence, and 2 sides are temporary sides inside the big pen. The small pen has hog panel all around all 4 sides for a sturdy physical barrier, electric wire on the inside. They learn pretty quick that getting close to the boundary is a bad thing. They also learn that the orange snow fence is a bad thing. After about 3-4 weeks, I take down the two temporary sides. The snow fence gives them a visible barrier, they already know it's bad, and they stay away from the fence. Never lost one doing it this way.

The basic trick is to train them young when your physical barrier doesn't have to be rock solid, and give them a visible boundary that they associate with the electric voodoo. I've even just zip-tied hog panel to the t-posts. It only has to be strong enough to hold a 50 pound pig who will be trying to get away from it anyway.

I tried just 3 strands of wire with pigs once. They blew right through it - partly because they couldn't see it, partly because they didn't know what it was and that "good" was back in the pen. In my opinion, there has to be a physical barrier until they learn what it is that zaps them.

My guess is I can use a similar method with calves. I'm thinking of making a small woven wire pen with just a 100 foot piece of field fence plus electric with a larger pasture of high tensile. I'm hoping they'll figure out that the fenceline is bad, the woven wire will hold the ones who are slow learners. Once they get it, let them out into the pasture. They should all be trained by the time they're 130 pounds and I don't need field fence for the entire pasture.