# Electric Fencing



## lupinfarm (Sep 10, 2009)

Just a thought, my horse pasture fencing is electric poly rope in half of it. I know I was told or it was suggested rather that I use tape for the goats electric fence because it's more visible, however, Tape doesn't hold a good charge really  and often it gets tangled and looks really ugly. I was wondering, since I'll have a lot of left over polyrope, could I do 6-strand electric, top, middle, and bottom strands of the white poly rope for visibility and the other three in the bare-wire electric for shock value? 

I have a fencer that is rated for 50 miles, pretty juiced up bugger that is good enough for sheep. I'm going to have a secondary fenceline for esthetics too, but I was just wondering if you guys think that would work.


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## lupinfarm (Sep 11, 2009)

Anyone...?


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## Beekissed (Sep 11, 2009)

That sounds good to me!  You will have the visibility and the juice in one fence...sounds perfect!


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## Run-A-Muck Ranch (Sep 11, 2009)

Do you have your sheep already inside the electric fence???

Only reason I asked is we used to have electric up for the sheep too...I even bragged about how nice they were with only having electric fencing to keep them in...They never got outta the fence...Not once....THAT IS UNTIL................our naughty naughty 'London' figured out that if she pushes the fence with her wool right around her neck she could get out...As soon as she did that all the other sheep followed her. I eventually had about 40 sheep running up and down the road at night. 

My goats on the other hand never had electric fencing for keeping them in. We had field fence up by that time. 

And our fence (the electric part) was a massive heavy duty 'weed burner' that would send a grown man onto his butt if he touched it (my hubby is 6ft. 5 in and about 240 pounds, he was sent onto his butt more than once from accidently touching the fence).


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## lupinfarm (Sep 11, 2009)

Ohh we don't *have* sheep, it's just rated for sheep. It's the kind of fencer that sheep farmers around here buy.


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## freemotion (Sep 11, 2009)

Must you use barbed wire instead of smooth?  I have seen some horrific injuries to horses with barbed wire....it acts like a saw if a horse gets entangled, since they are so big and strong.  Just sayin'.  Smooth wire gives a pretty good zap, too.


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## lupinfarm (Sep 11, 2009)

I'm...not...using barbed wire. Bare wire is bare... the smooth wire... 18 gauge. This field is no where near the horse pasture anyway, it's solely for the goats, but I didn't actually say I was using barbed wire, I said bare wire


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## cmjust0 (Sep 11, 2009)

Go for it.  I see no problems whatsoever.



Then again, I've used bare wire with no problems many times.  They may not see it at first, but they learn where it is pretty quickly.  

I prefer the cheapo, thin polyrope these days, though...easier to work with, IMHO.


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## lupinfarm (Sep 11, 2009)

Ohh yeah it's a lot easier to work with! HOWEVER It is considerably more expensive than bare wire.


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## freemotion (Sep 11, 2009)

lupinfarm said:
			
		

> I'm...not...using barbed wire. Bare wire is bare... the smooth wire... 18 gauge. This field is no where near the horse pasture anyway, it's solely for the goats, but I didn't actually say I was using barbed wire, I said bare wire


Eek!  My bad!  I read "barb" instead of "bare."  I do have a vision issue that cannot be corrected, so need to slow down sometimes!  Sorry!


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## lupinfarm (Sep 11, 2009)

Hahaha... That's okay, I wear glasses and always muddle things up.


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## cmjust0 (Sep 11, 2009)

lupinfarm said:
			
		

> Ohh yeah it's a lot easier to work with! HOWEVER It is considerably more expensive than bare wire.


Isn't it funny how that works?  

Personally, I think it should be the other way around...I think the things that work the best should always be cheaper, and things should get more and more expensive the worse they get.


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## lupinfarm (Sep 11, 2009)

Haha.. Of course I was paying $75/roll of the polyrope, but we also found someone who sells it for $35/roll (600ft rolls, but at 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 lines, thats not cheap LOL).


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## skippacheval (Dec 27, 2009)

I have high tensile wire that is attached to a high output fence charger. We have 7 wires with the bottom 3  only 4 inches apart and the bottom wire 4 inches off the ground.  They are bottom hot(wire 1) then hot wires 3,5,7, the others are grounded.  The goats still get out.  You will need woven wire which we have changed to.  They figure out how to quickly sneak under the fence.  They kind of run at it.  I wouldn't trust just straight wire fence(or rope).   Sorry!


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## lupinfarm (Dec 27, 2009)

skippacheval said:
			
		

> I have high tensile wire that is attached to a high output fence charger. We have 7 wires with the bottom 3  only 4 inches apart and the bottom wire 4 inches off the ground.  They are bottom hot(wire 1) then hot wires 3,5,7, the others are grounded.  The goats still get out.  You will need woven wire which we have changed to.  They figure out how to quickly sneak under the fence.  They kind of run at it.  I wouldn't trust just straight wire fence(or rope).   Sorry!


The issue is that we don't have enough soil for posts for high tensile woven fence. My goat fencing is going to be a wood floating fence, its 4 "rails" which are 3" cedar logs on kind of a-frames with 4 more lines of electric run on the inside with one at the top, if that makes sense.


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