what kind of fencing do you use for sheep

[boykin2010]

oh and who would i call to install the fence properly. can u estimate the amount of time it would take to do this by myself? or the amount of time the companies will take to do it. how much do companies charge to put the fencing up.

 

[patandchickens]

The big thing for high tensile is that the posts, especially corners and gates and in dips, ABSOLUTELY MUST be set EXTRAORDINARILY DEEP AND TIGHT AND WELL. (And be good large-diameter posts, not just standard 4-5" fenceposts). (e.t.a. - the corners, at least, generally ought to be concreted in, too, especially if your soil tends towards the wet end of the spectrum). If you do not have equipment or energy to do it easily yourself or if you have not set a lot of wooden fenceposts before you may well be better off hiring someone to do it.

Actually putting up the high tensile wire, per se, is not brain surgery. You need the thingie to tension it (can often rent it at tool-rental stores), and as the previous poster says you need to *follow directions* and not say "oh I bet it will be ok with fewer strands or different spacing or not electrified" or things like that.

Or if you are limited in what you can do, you can certainly hire someone to install the hgih tensile wire too.

To find people who will set fenceposts and/or do the whole fencing project for you, first try feedstore bulletin-boards and ask around. If that fails to produce reasonable leads, look for small cheap classified ads for fencing contractors, but only ones that sound like they do mostly farm fencing -- someone whose business is putting up spiff privacy fencing around suburban townhomes is not going to be of any use to you and you couldn't afford them anyhow

If it were me, I'd hire out the corner and gate and 'dip' posts, also the run posts if there were too many for me to set well by hand, and set up the actual wire myself. But everyone's situation is different.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[boykin2010]

ok thank you. I would really prefer to get someone else to do it because i have absolutely NO experience in fencing. it would be much easier. Can you tell me an approximate cost for someone else to fence in 2 and a half acres or about 1600 feet. ( with high tensile )

 

[RustyDHart]

We had 25 acres of high tensil fence put in.....best investment. Treated posts every 25' with 5 strands of wire....every other one is electric. We have a poly line water system with a spigot every 300' that we can tap into our water tanks with floats in them. Like "Hooked on Phonics"...it works for me!!!

 

[goodhors]

Yes, I would recommend electric because it will sting them and teach the sheep to stay off the wire. Tensile is not like poly tape, it will stay up and in place if installed correctly. I do hear a lot of horses go thru the poly tape fences on a regular basis, they have no respect for it because they have learned how to ignore the electric or it is not on regular.

You have to train the animals to stay away from the fence, and having electric on all the time is your best method.

Our first sheep was a freebie. We had our tensile wire up, but the bottom wire was NOT hot then. Our sheep would do a baseball slide, right under those two lower wires and get out into the neighbor's yard. We didn't know this was going on until husband surprised the horses and sheep one day. He got halfway out to the back of field before he called, SAW the sheep slide back inside the fence and come running!

Sheep just went nose first, legs behind along her stomach and went thru the wires easily!! We had to go back and electrify the WHOLE bottom wire around the fields so fence would contain the sheep. This actually turned out as a bonus, because we SAW a couple dogs try to go under the wire and get burned!! They yelped and ran away instead of coming in after the animals.

Tensile wire is good, but it won't hold them if they lean thru to pull the wires apart. Animals will get hurt doing that, so you NEED the electric to back up the physical barrier. Hight tensile wire is DESIGNED to be electrified, to work properly. Kind of like putting up fence, but doing no bracing of end or corner posts. Those posts will not be able to hold the wire, will pull and loosen, giving you sagging fences.

Sorry, you need to do ALL the proper steps and parts of a correct installation, or fence is not going to work well for you. Electric fencer working on the high tensile wire is a basic part, your animals will get in trouble without the fencer installed and left running.

 

[rockdoveranch]

We use field wire.

Our hair sheep will go right through electric fencing.

For quick and easy pens we use hog panels.

 

[eden]

Don't use chainlink without a good zippy electric wire at sheep height, or boards alllllll along at same level. Not even briefly before you get the hotwire or boards *on*. They whomp into it with their heads and it gets all saggy baggy stretched-out and is never really right again. Ask me how I know

Actually, in my very limited experience (five sheep since late April or so), the two best kinds of fence for sheep are either a) some kind of wire mesh with well-charged electric wire added at sheep height, I use 6x6 mixed-stock fencing; or b) any kind of mesh fencing surrounding a paddock so large and lush that the sheep simply never *think* of challenging the fence.

If they challenge the fence and you do not have hotwire or boards at sheep-noggin height, they will whack the fence mesh til they bend it upwards from the ground and squeeze underneath. (Then, if they are my ram, they will realize 'OMG, I am in the horse pasture being herded around by suddenly-enlivened elderly TBs and I can't find my way back home!' ) Sheep turn out to be REALLY a lot different to fence than horses are -- horses go over or thru, sheep go *under*.

Electronet also works good but is a fair nuisance to maintain, although of course it has the valuable tradeoff of being easy to move around to rotate grazing.

Multi-strand electric tape has not worked real reliably for me but in larger lusher pastures it might be fine (at least to keep sheep confined).

In fact, the above is all just w/r/t keeping sheep IN. Keeping predators OUT is a whole different kettle of fish. And also quite necessary, especially at night.

I lock my sheep into their night pen, which is 5' chainlink with sheep-height boards on the inside and electric wire (on standoff insulators) on the outside near the top, and pavers/bricks/rubble around the base to discourage coyotes from digging in. So far so good.

Pat

How do you install the boards along the fence? We live in an area where I don't expect predators to be a problem, but we do have neighbor's so I don't want the sheep getting out! We have a 1/2 acre that already has chainlink all around.

 

[Mike CHS]

How do you install the boards along the fence? We live in an area where I don't expect predators to be a problem, but we do have neighbor's so I don't want the sheep getting out! We have a 1/2 acre that already has chainlink all around.

I'm glad you quit lurking but this thread is real old. You might get a better response if you start a new thread so that more people will see it since a lot of members don't often view "new" threads (me included). There is a lot of friendly sheep people that would be more than happy to offer some help. Many of the members view and respond to threads in multiple animal specie threads.