Got some fence did

Oh how I hated fencing with barbed wire. Sneaky chit got me every time.  

Miller...you need to tighten them wires up a bit more...but it still looks good! lots of work!

What are you trying to fence in? Or out?

Well, you do you, and good luck. Any calves or 1 year olds in the cattle? In my experience, calling a hot wire useless is a pretty bold statement. For me, a plain barb wire fence is also nearly useless after a fashion. As easy as it draws blood on you, cows love to itch their neck and butts on it and before you know it’s all saggy. Same with reaching over or more so under , then the bottom wire gets stretched out and thee calves can get on the other side, which that tends to make momma rather anxious, which in turn gets the rest of the herd anxious rendering your fence a mere suggestion easily ignored. A properly grounded electric fence with a quality strong charger is invaluable augmenting a well structured barb fence. I always integrate them together.

I maintain 6 quarter sections of pasture. The hot wire fence works great. I has to be well grounded. And kept tight. We have two hot strande one about 18" and one about 36". Along the highway were we've had problems I've but a grounded wire between the two. It's a short 1/4 mile section. All the fences have 100 mile range fencers and I keep the brush clear. Cows are well trained and won't even cross over a opened gate that's laying on the ground. I run all the fences that we have cows in each week and check. It only takes a couple hours on the Polaris. Most of the fences are 8" wooden corner posts a T post every 10 posts and the rest are step ins made from 1/2" rebar 4' long with 1' in the ground. We have 4 strand barb wire on the permanent sections but I still needed to run a electric on a stand off or the cows just rub against it till they break a couple posts and push on through.

Naturally I knew ahead of time anything I had to say would be totally worthless to you, which is why I said from the beginning you do you.

So, a solar powered fence it seems..., yeah, not what I meant by a quality energizer    Can work, if cows are trained to it to begin with, not crowded, and well fed. Your number of cows per acre is borderline to crowded in my opinion.

One thing for certain, well fed cows makes for good fences.  One or 2 strands?!  Please, is that even a fence?  Let's get real! 

Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s another wall I see over there that looks lonely.

Edited by Tbone95 - 07 Oct 2019 at 2:34pm

Even better, clamp every other barb wire to the ground wire! Haven’t done that yet because I’ll be moving the run of fence that feeds the loop.

Maybe Steve! I’ve called my cows a lot of things over the years, don’t remember “smart” as one of them!!

One thing for sure, between snow drifts, deer, wet springs, and reaching/ inquisitive cows and calves, barb wire will sag in time. They all need maintenance.

shameless dude wrote: best tester on them lectric fences...just pee on them!

Shamless my dad use to buy nothing but International Super 98 fence chargers. We ran two of them all the time on several miles of fence. Neighbors always used battery chargers weren't worth a darn. One day one of the neighbors boys was down home saying how he could piss on the fence my brothers and I dared him to do it on one of ours, I swear to god he lite up like a Christmas tree!! He died awful young if I remember around 39 or 40 years old I still think it had something to do with him pissing on our fence!

That'll be a hard pass on the peeing there shameless.  No thanks.  Had a buddy of mine when we were young wonder what would happen.  I said I wouldn't do that if I were him, as I'd felt what it felt like on your hand.  He....still wondered.....and he about ripped his weenie off getting away from there.  And that was in the days before the modern low impedance ones we have now.  I got a wire tangled up in my glove as I threw it over the wire.  Took me a minute to realize what happened, as I was laying on my back, looking up at the sky, wondering why in the heck my arm hurt so bad.  Then saw the tie wire I tried to throw over the fence dangling from the electric wire.  Oh yeeeaaaaahhhhh......

When it dries down here the hot wire sets lose ground ability too. We try to compensate but little will do when the cows figure out the hot wire is NOT so hot, and they do test it on their own often enough. Four wire was what was here for close to fifty years according to neighbors, not been a problem and seems clover with warm season grasses and fescue do well for common feed ground.

Edited by DMiller - 08 Oct 2019 at 8:45am