Insane fencing costs?

[Mike CHS]

Most new farms don't qualify the first year (in Tennessee anyway and several other states that I'm familiar with). We are going to apply for some funds next year for some equipment improvements but we weren't eligible this year (you need 50 head of livestock and we only have 25). Next summer we will be closer to 75 head.

 

[Rezchamp]

Lots of different ideas.
I just do stuff myself. It cuts costs by about 1/2.
I buy lathed 4" green treated fence posts. They're in the grounds every 20'. The corners are braced by angling a 10' 2x4 fro the top of the corner post to the bottom(pretty much ground level) of another post about 7' away. Same thing going the other way from the corner. All corners are done the same way. (Kinda like Baymule's pic on pg6 except for the top{horizontal)rails). All the gates are the same way too.
Using a crowbar I make holes about an inch or 2 smaller in diameter than the post, pit some water in the hole and start the post into the hole just placing it there with a little thrust. Where safety glasses or close your eyes and look away or the muddy water could splash into them(eyes).
A 12 lb post mall and 45 gallon drum gives you some really good muscle tone. If a sq acre is roughly 210x210 so your fence overall length will be roughly 2730 linear feet.
Dang with much fencing I'd go square to bout 682x682 to make one large pasture of roughly 10 acres. It takes 2 miles of fence to close 1 quarter section but it takes double the fence(4 miles) to close 4x the land(a section) and double the fence again to do quadruple the acreage again. What I mean is it's much more cost efficient to go square.
That said I appreciatte your desire to employ your proposed layout.
And yes, cost of most stuff is steadily rising.
I wish you well.

 

[maritown]

Just to update, we bought fencing materials for about 4k and rented an auger for the weekend for about $200. The Amish labor costs for about 20 hrs is around 1500. So even if it takes them 40hrs, we are sitting happily at less then half of the quoted price. Thanks for all the help everyone! It is so fun to hear what fencing everyone has, LOL.

 

[dejavoodoo114]

I am so glad you were able to reduce your cost! I saw this thread pop up but was waiting for time to reply. For us, we paid $1.20 a foot for approx 9 acres of steep nasty pasture. They even had to rent a mini back hoe to level some of it out so their bobcat wouldn't roll! Cost me $12,000 all told for 5 strand electric High Tensile fence. Which does keep our goats and swine in so long as the electric is working!

 

[maritown]

I am so glad you were able to reduce your cost! I saw this thread pop up but was waiting for time to reply. For us, we paid $1.20 a foot for approx 9 acres of steep nasty pasture. They even had to rent a mini back hoe to level some of it out so their bobcat wouldn't roll! Cost me $12,000 all told for 5 strand electric High Tensile fence. Which does keep our goats and swine in so long as the electric is working!

I'm thinking of doing the high tensile for the rest of the acreage when we are ready to fence it! I definitely wanted the woven wire to start as I knew we would be too busy with the move to worry about any sort of learning curve with the animals.

It'll be a lot of fun moving forward to learn and experiment with fencing!

 

[Bruce]

I don't know about your animals but @Mike CHS and I can tell you that we both learned REAL FAST that the electric fence wasn't something we wanted to touch a second time (and it wasn't on purpose the FIRST time!) I bet even a "dumb animal" will learn just as fast.

Glad your neighbors were willing to do the work. I'm sure they don't have the overhead of the fencing company as detailed by @greybeard. But I bet they have as much experience building fences

 

[Baymule]

I sure am glad that the fence situation got all fixed up for you! Good neighbors are a blessing!

 

[Mike CHS]

Bruce is right that it doesn't take two times to learn but I have been bit more than that. The one thing I would make sure of is that you don't have many power outages. My sheep can sense when I turn the power off and they will cross under the hot wires. I'm not sure how they do that but they do.

 

[Bruce]

Hurts the 2nd and 3rd time too doesn't it!

Hmm, I hope the predators I'm expecting to keep out don't have that same sense! I'm not worried about the alpacas going over though I suppose they could. They never even tried the cr@ppy 3ish to 1.3ish foot fence that was here before I properly fenced in the acre with 4' field fence topped with hot wire at 5'. I've never seen them jump anything.

 

[Young At Heart]

Hello everyone!

We recently bought a property and want to fence in four 1-acre pastures. We want them connected in sets of two with an aisle in between, so each set of 2 pastures shares one fence line.

Since this property is out of state from our current farm, I'm trying to get fencing up so that we can simply move the goats over when we move.

I am interested in woven wire fencing. It's what we have now, it works great for both our goats and our potbellies. So, I contacted a livestock fencing contractor to get a quote.

Anyway, when I saw it I almost had a heart attack. Just over $25,000.
I'm sorry, what!?

Is it just me or is that absolutely insane? Is that seriously what fencing costs? Woven wire cost $1500. Even with labor costs, gates, posts...can it really be that much, or is this guy just way overpriced? At this point I'd rather try to install it myself, with no experience LOL.

Yes that is insane! We had 3 sides of 45 acres plus 3 long stretches of cross fence and 5 gates put in , ( woven wire with 1 strand of barbedwired for a cost of approx $6500 Ask around you may be able to find an all purpose handy guy with fence experience who'll do it for less Its mainly hard work Several quotes are a must We had pond building quotes range from 7500 to over 100k Good luck! Enjoy your new place