Lol yet another fencing thread

[Kusanar]

Thanks any chance you could post a picture? I am a very visual kind of guy.

I'll be going out there tomorrow, I'll try to get a pic then specifically of the post setup.

This will give you an idea though until I get better ones.

You can see 1 side of the wire x and you can see the post going across the top, this is one of the same posts we used as fence posts that is wedged in between the gate post and another one and pegged in place with a rebar stake.

 

[Kusanar]

Something like this maybe?View attachment 81127

Yep! Pretty much exactly! Ours aren't cemented in, but they were sharpened and shoved in the ground with no holes being dug (we have a front end loader we used to plant posts) so they were tight from the start.

 

[Kusanar]

Sounds right to me

 

[Kusanar]

Ran the zero turn finsh mower over the pasture. There is nice green grass under all that over brush, left from bush hogging last fall. I calculated the pasture area at just a little over 4 acres. I want to start of with a cow and her calf and 6 hair sheep. I have another 10 acre pasture that won't be fenced this year. But will be mowed for hay twice, weather permitting... Hopefully I'll have enough grass and hay for them. What's your thoughts?

Next is corner posts, should be fun...

I don't know what the stocking rate is in your area. Here it is 1 animal unit for every 2 acres. With the species you are looking at, 1 cow and her calf or 6 ewes and their lambs are 1 animal unit, so you would be looking at 2 animal units which would be about right for where I am with that 4 acre lot. The 10 acres should produce enough hay if it is decent grass.

I have probably somewhere around 8 acres fenced and about an acre not fenced, I have 2 normal horses and a mini, so somewhere around 2.5 animal units or 5 acres worth. We bale the 8 acres with the animals in the field when the spring grass is growing faster than they can keep up along with the acre not fenced, then the acre not fenced gets baled again later in the summer and that produces enough hay for the winter as long as they don't trash a lot of it (I feed in a hay net to prevent them from trashing it)

 

[Grant]

I had a similar auger when I was putting in all my fence. You’ll be glad you’ve got that.

 

[farmerjan]

We have a post hole digger and it sits. We use the driver for most everything. You get a tight post right from the get go without tamping and all that. But we don't have flat land and we DO have lots of rock and ledge.

I think we use a grade 5 shear pin on the bush hog; the tractor is a 7040 and it is a batwing bush hog.... the Duetz is about a 80-90 hp and use the 8 ft bush hog on it.... again we have alot of ledge and rock and I spend alot of time picking the bush hog up to glide over them. We will use it on 3-4 ft autumn olive and cedars too....

You're getting there.

 

[farmerjan]

There's just something really satisfying about bush hogging autumn olives. I wouldn't bush hog a cedar though. I would dig it up and plant it somewhere else.

Please come visit... you can go through and start digging cedars...... We might even pay you as well as give you all you want to take home.......

 

[Baymule]

I set the corner posts and ran a string from corner to corner. If too long of a span, I set a T-post in the middle and wrapped the string around it.

If you continually graze the same pasture, the animals will graze their favorite grasses hard. Every time they grow a little, the animals will nip them off. This has been known to kill the grasses, since it gets bit off and can't grow. Unless you have galloping, growing a foot a day grass, you need to rest it. This of course, means that you need at least TWO pastures to rotate the animals on. Pounding T-posts is vastly satisfying. We have a pounder like yours, but my favorite is a home made one that is real heavy. If you can lift it up, it gathers velocity coming down and really whams the T-post! Haha

 

[farmerjan]

And you take and cross fence with some moveable electric to cut them down to 1-2 acres so that the animals have to graze the WHOLE section... hard.... eating everything, then moved off to another section. You will actually get more of the desirable grasses growing better as it seems that many of the undesirable types grow fast early, then, if cut way down or grazed, it takes longer for them to recover and the preferred grasses get enough light and more water to grow faster.... we run 15 cows with calves on a place that is divided into about 5-6 paddocks, some are only 3-5 acre sections; and they will be in some for only 5-7 days and then moved out and the good grass comes back gangbusters....

 

[farmerjan]

Actually, the tractor looks about balanced for the post hole digger.....not enough HP is alot worse than too much... you will learn to find the sweet spot with that tractor....