by Ethan
on July 13, 2009
This is the big week that the fence goes up on our place. I can honestly say that I can hardly wait for this project to be done, but at the same time I feel a bit overwhelmed. Oh well, I guess we are just going to start regardless! One thing that I am confident of is that we will be in good hands with Gary Duncan of Powerflex helping us out. Check out the last two questions from my little Q & A interview with him and then check back all week long for the fence building progress.
7.) Lightening can be an issue with an electric fence. How can you handle that and are there other things that need to be considered.
Lightning is a powerful force. But, we can do things on the fence to try to get it to go ground prior to getting to your fence charger. Most larger energizers have two fuses in them – one for the fence side and another for the power supply side. A surge protector on the power side is also a device that will help. Some farms are more prone to lightning than are others. If your farm has historically had a lot of lightning hits, then multiple devices on the fence may be in order. There are different types of lightning protection devices, but most work somewhat in the same way. Either there are contact points or a spark gap that will activate when a surge of lightning attacks it. Some have coils. The coil is a device that aids in defusing and slowing down the flow of lightning thus encouraging it to make the spark gap in the device. It is generally recommended that you install one more ground rod at your lightning protection than you did at the energizer. Ie: you have 4 ground rods at the energizer, you should have 5 at your lightning protection. This device should be installed 65 feet away from your energizer grounds. No device is guaranteed to stop lightning entirely but it is worth the effort to try.
8.) So, how does this whole process go together in a nutshell? Is it a fairly difficult process or something that someone can get the hang of as they work?
If you are just starting out with electric fence I would recommend that you read up as much as you can. There is much information on the internet about electric fencing. I don’t think that electric fencing is difficult, but you do need to think it out as you build your fence. Hi-tensile wire is relatively easy to work with. Wire usually comes in 4000’ coils (with a weight of 100#’s) and you’ll need a wire dispenser, also called a spinning jenny to roll out your wire. Never try it without one! You can either crimp your joints and connections or you can hand knot them. If you crimp, you will need a good crimp tool. Even if you hand knot, there are still places that you will need to crimp. Hand knotting is not really all that hard to learn, however, only practice makes perfect. Once you learn how to tie hand knots, you will not need to carry many tools around with you as you build fence.
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by Ethan
on July 11, 2009
We are getting closer and closer to actually beginning to put up the hi-tensile on our farm, but it has been lots of thought and preparation put into this project. Most of the prep work that we have been doing is researching, studying, and planning. Thanks to the help of Gary Duncan of Powerflex Fence the research and planning have been made a lot easier. I hope you are enjoying these Q & A posts and that you are learning as much as I am!
5.) I know for our perimeter fencing we have been discussing a six wire fence. How many wires do you usually suggest for the various applications that people use hi-tensile fencing for?
This will depend mainly on the type of livestock that you wish to contain. Additionally, perimeter fences will have more strands than interior ones will. For cattle we normally suggest 5 strands on the perimeter, but only 1 strand will work fine for interior cross fences. If you are concerned about calves going under this single strand then install a second or third strand.
With sheep or goats, perimeter fences usually have from 6 to 8 strands. I personally know people who get along with 5 strands for goats, but 6 to 8 is more common. Some of this will be dictated by your management practices also. If, for instance, you will be with your livestock daily or more and you are moving them to fresh forage regularly, then you can probably get by with less strands of wire. The animals wont be searching for forage and will be less likely to challenge a fence.
6.) In the past I have read about hi-tensile fences being set up with alternating hot and ground wires in the fence. What do you suggest in regards to a set-up like that and grounding in general?
Alternating hot and ground wires can be effective with dry soil conditions, especially in the case of goats or other lightweight livestock. With a all hot wire system, in order to receive a shock, you have to be grounded to the earth while touching the hot wire, thus completing the curcuit. In the case of a small goat, that might be standing on a dry thatch of grass, they may not be fully grounded and do not receive a shock or a full shock. When using alternating ground wires, if an animal touches a hot wire and a ground wire at the same time they will receive a full shock, regardless of wheather their feet are well grounded or not.
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by Ethan
on July 10, 2009
Again, a big thank you to Gary Duncan for taking the time to answer these questions and to chime in on the comments. Here are the next two questions I asked him along with his wonderful responses.
3.) What makes the PowerFlex post and the hi-tensile fencing system good option for the farm practicing Management Intensive Grazing.
I think that the answer to that is “flexibility”. This system offers a lot of benefits during installation and afterwards. It is an easy system to install and should you want to add a gate later it is very easy to accommodate that as well. As we become better graziers, we often need to modify our system to fit our needs and climatic conditions. With this system it is very easy to add portable fencing components to further subdivide larger paddocks and get better utilization of our resources. Besides that it is more economical to install and will last much longer.
4.) Obviously when you are dealing with electric fence the fence energizer is an important piece of the puzzle. What sort of advice do you generally give to someone when they are picking out an energizer?
First off, don’t necessarily believe everything that you read on the label of the box ! There is really no international standard in the way energizers are rated, so labeling can be very confusing. Some manufacturers state stored joules while others give you output joules. Most will give you mileage and some will give you acres. These claims will vary greatly depending on may factors. Most manufacturers will claim that one output joule will power about 10 miles of fence. They may with a clean fence with no vegetation on it. However, when you consider grass and vegetation load you would be better off using 3 miles per joule. This will give you adequate power under high vegetation periods. If a manufacturer only gives you the stored joule rating, then reduce that by about 30% to know what the output joule rating is. With electric fence energizers, more power is better than not enough power. Another aspect to be aware of is grounding the energizer. None of them will operate to optimum performance without adequate grounding. One suggestion is to install 3 feet of ground rod per output joule.
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Here are the first two questions and answers from my interview with Gary Duncan of the Powerflex Fence company. Feel free to add questions of your own in the comments and I’ll see if we can get some feedback from Mr. Duncan.
1.) Hi-Tensile fencing is something that is fairly new to me. Thanks to the readers of my blog I was turned onto this type of fencing and decided it would be a good fit for our fencing needs. Could you give a brief overview of the ins and outs of a hi-tensile fence?
Firstly, hi-tensile electric fencing is a physiological barrier rather than a physical one. Typically a traditional fence of barbed, woven or a board fence is a physical barrier and must be maintained taunt and tight to be effective. Electric fences work on the memory of the animal from a previous shock. Once properly trained, animals respect electric fences greatly. They simply learn not to challenge them. Hi-tensile wire itself is much stronger than the traditional low carbon wire used in agricultural fencing. 12.5 gauge hi-tensile wire has a breaking strength of 1300 pounds plus. Around 3X more than barbed wire. The finish on hi-tensile wire is also superior. It has at least a class III galvanized coating, which will last 3 to 4 times longer than class I traditional wires. Hi-tensile wire will also stretch up to about 2% of its initial tension, but once stretched, it will return to its initial tension. This feature reduces the maintenance that is normally required to keep other fencing tight and effective.
2.) Can you tell me more about the PowerFlex posts and all their benefits?
The PowerFlex Posts are an “oriented” composite. They are comprised of about 70% polypropylene and 30% wood fiber. The orientation process that they go thru during manufacture gives them grain vertically similar to woodgrain. This adds strength and flexibility. All material used is virgin and no recycled products are used. They are made of an insulative material, so do not require insulators. Only a cotter pin to hold the wire in place. I think that the greatest benefit that Powerflex Posts offer is that they are flexible. They will yield to pressure, then return to their upright position. Next is the fact that they are made of an insulative material. Anyone that has been around electric fencing very long soon realizes that much of their maintenance involves replacing broken insulators and finding shorts on conductive posts.
Make sure you check back tomorrow for more. Also, a big thanks goes out to Mr. Duncan for all of the time he as taken helping us figure out what we need and answering our questions!
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Finally it is going to happen. Finally we are going to begin putting up our perimeter fence! I can’t tell you how amazing it is going to be to actually have a fence around our farm so that we can really get down to business with our managed grazing. We have been doing the best that we can right now, but without that nice exterior fencing it has been more difficult and more time consuming. Not only will it be great for our cattle, but it will also open up so many more options with our pigs. This is a very good thing!
If you have been around the blog for awhile you may already know that we have decided to go with six wires of hi-tensile fence and Powerflex line posts. Quite awhile ago I posted some of the fencing ideas that we were considering and someone (sorry I don’t remember who) mentioned in the comments that we should consider hi-tensile. It was something I had never heard of, but I checked it out right away and eventually decided it was the best fit for us.
While I was researching hi-tensile fencing I came across the Powerflex website and started to read about their posts. It seemed like the perfect fit and since then I have been in contact with the folks at Powerflex talking about all of our fencing needs and options. Next week Gary Duncan of Powerflex will be delivering our materials and giving us a hand, but before we begin the work I thought it would be nice to do a little Q & A interview with him about their posts and hi-tensile fencing in general.
I encourage you to check out the
Powerflex website today and then check back the next few days for the interview. Like I said … I am very excited about this!
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Sustainable, Local, Natural, Organic, and all those other “label” words are pretty big right now. And I have to admit that I have used them quite a bit here on the blog and in conversation with people all over the place. Sometimes I think that they are best thing we have to describe what we are doing and what we are striving to do, but there are other times when I think that words just can’t say enough or even that certain words are losing their meaning. Words are important to me … so, this is the kind of stuff that I think of from time to time.
But, as I read Allan Nation’s July, 2nd blog post about Horizon Brands new “natural dairy” line of products the idea of word labels and categories really started bouncing around in my mind. Check out this quote from Mr. Nation’s blog post:
“Dean Foods’ Horizon Brands plans to create a ‘natural dairy’ line to profit from consumers’ increasing disillusionment with Certified organic dairy products. Sales growth from organic products has flattened as consumers have learned that much of today’s organic milk did not come from pristine little pastoral farms in Vermont as they had supposed but from large-scale feedlot dairies in the West.”
Basically it is time to change the label because the “organic secret” got out. The word “organic” no longer gets milk out of the fridge case quick enough and at a high enough volume so the powers that be in the marketing department have decided that “natural” must be the new thing on the label. I suppose they are hoping that this will bring back all their old organic customers and add some new natural customers.
Of course if this quote is to be trusted it also seems that it will make life easier for the Horizon company:
“Deans new Horizon “natural dairy” line will only claim that the milk is from cows who have not been given bovine growth hormones. This frees them to access all of their milk from industrial dairies without fear of media exposure or chastisement.”
I understand our need for labels and descriptive words, but I do have a hard time understanding how easily we let those words influence our purchasing and thought process. Oh well, I guess I’ll just invent a word or phrase for our farm … kind of like Joel Salatin has done!
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Yesterday we borrowed a mower (ours is ready for a junk pile or someone who likes to tinker) and started to attack the mess that we call our farm. So far this year we have mowed twice, including yesterday, so to say that things were tall might be a bit of an understatement. The great thing about yesterdays work though was that we didn’t just mow, but we also moved a bunch of junk and threw away quite a bit of stuff as well. All of the sudden our farm yard looks a lot bigger and I feel a lot better walking around outside.
Even though the yard looks so much better and things are picked up I still kind of feel like I just swept most of the stuff under the rug. We had some pretty big piles of things that we have collected for future use on the farm and leftover construction materials. I sorted through and trashed as much as possible, but there was still a lot of “good junk”. What I didn’t want to do right now was just make another pile in a place where I would have to move it eventually. So, I decided to make mobile piles. Now pretty much anything with wheels has stuff on it. That way I can move my piles easily by just hooking them up to the tractor!
One side effect of all the mowing is that the new pigs have decided that they can squeeze through the holes in the cattle panels (there are only two in their pen). That was a construction oversight on my part, but it did make for some cute pictures as you can see above! Now for the fence…
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Yesterday the builder arrived with materials, equipment, and workers to start our shed. They got things set up in the morning and dug 4 post holes before lunch. After they came back from lunch, however, they weren’t here too long before I got a knock on the door. There was a slight problem. Some of the posts they had gotten in weren’t the right size and they couldn’t get the right size in until the middle of next week. So they headed home and should be back Wednesday. It still looks like we should get it up before we fence though – we just have to be a bit more patient to see it up.
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Here is our 2nd calf this year. Our timing for calving this year won’t be quite where we like because of all that was going on last year but there will be calves none the less and we’ll get back on schedule soon. So far we have 2 bull calves this year for 2011’s beef. Hard to say when they are this cute!
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This week Becca’s parents have been visiting. Becca’s dad spent the last few days constructing doors for our storm shelter. They are now installed and much more secure than the cattle panel that we had down in there (to put across the door in hopes of not being sucked out in case of a tornado.) You can head over to my wife’s blog to read a bit more about our glorified septic tank . . . errr . . . storm shelter and see pictures of it being installed. It sure is nice to know it’s out there though!
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This is the big week that the fence goes up on our place. I can honestly say that I can hardly wait for this project to be done, but at the same time I feel a bit overwhelmed. Oh well, I guess we are just going to start regardless! One thing that I am confident of is that we will be in good hands with Gary Duncan of Powerflex helping us out. Check out the last two questions from my little Q & A interview with him and then check back all week long for the fence building progress.
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