Baymule
Herd Master
There have been a lot of fence discussions here on BYH. As many of you know, my husband and I bought a home on 8 acres and moved 160 miles to be close to our DD, DSIL and our precious 2 grand daughters. There was nothing here but the house. Nothing. We had a house in town and acreage outside of town where we kept our horses, at our previous place. We had already made a lot of fencing mistakes. We used field fencing, which the horses could hang a hoof in and they pawed it to pieces in some places. Repairs were an ongoing project. We also stapled fence to trees where they were on the property line. Big boo-boo. Do you know what happens to the fence when the tree dies and falls down? Or when a storm blows the tree over? I do and I also know what it feels like to kick myself for making dumb mistakes. There was also a dry wash running through our previous land that turned into a raging, flooding river when there was a lot of rain. We had run the field fence across the dry wash and floods knocked it flat. Floods uprooted fence posts too. We sunk new fence posts deeper, concreted them in, and wired them to trees up to 10 feet away as anchors. After every hard rain, I was walking fence line to see if I needed to make repairs.
I was determined not to repeat the mistakes I had already made. I did my research. I waffled on the goat/sheep wire, but ultimately decided on the horse wire. My husband almost fainted on the cost, but got on board when I explained that it would keep all our animals in, even down to the chickens. It would also keep out other animals we didn't want on our place, so we bit the bullet and moved forward with the fence. I took lots of pictures, so I hope this helps some one else on putting up their fence. These are pictures of different segments of the fences we put up.
Edited to add; Thank you @Mini Horses for pointing out this is NOT welded wire, which IMO is total crap, as it comes apart under very little usage. This is WOVEN wire, look closely at the pictures and you can see the knot that holds the wire together at every single intersection of the wires. This is why woven wire costs so much more than welded wire. Most of equate "welded" with strength, I know I did, having worked in machine and welding shops when I was younger. But this does not apply to fence wire. Never, ever, waste your money or time on welded wire unless you want it purely for decoration, it will NOT last 'till the water gets hot, up against livestock or even dogs.
It is important to set sturdy corner posts, properly braced. For this corner post, we cut a red cedar tree and cut it to post lengths.
You can make a wire loop, stapled at the top and bottom of opposing posts, insert a screwdriver or a stick, and twist the wire to tighten up the posts. It also serves to keep the posts from spreading or moving apart. The wire twist can be seen in the photo below. You can even cris-cross the wires to form an X for added strength.
You will want to run a string from corner to corner and measure the string for spacing the T-posts. I marked the string with surveyors tape so I would know where to pound the T-posts.
For a short span, we stretched the wire from corner to corner, measured and marked the wire for driving the T-posts. This span was 70 feet.
This is my husband pushing the wire out while our neighbor pounds in the T-post.
In some places the ground was so hard, we had to get the T-post started, water it, let it soak, pound another inch or two, water it, water it some more, it felt like we were planting trees! A few of them had to soak overnight.
I was determined not to repeat the mistakes I had already made. I did my research. I waffled on the goat/sheep wire, but ultimately decided on the horse wire. My husband almost fainted on the cost, but got on board when I explained that it would keep all our animals in, even down to the chickens. It would also keep out other animals we didn't want on our place, so we bit the bullet and moved forward with the fence. I took lots of pictures, so I hope this helps some one else on putting up their fence. These are pictures of different segments of the fences we put up.
Edited to add; Thank you @Mini Horses for pointing out this is NOT welded wire, which IMO is total crap, as it comes apart under very little usage. This is WOVEN wire, look closely at the pictures and you can see the knot that holds the wire together at every single intersection of the wires. This is why woven wire costs so much more than welded wire. Most of equate "welded" with strength, I know I did, having worked in machine and welding shops when I was younger. But this does not apply to fence wire. Never, ever, waste your money or time on welded wire unless you want it purely for decoration, it will NOT last 'till the water gets hot, up against livestock or even dogs.
It is important to set sturdy corner posts, properly braced. For this corner post, we cut a red cedar tree and cut it to post lengths.
You can make a wire loop, stapled at the top and bottom of opposing posts, insert a screwdriver or a stick, and twist the wire to tighten up the posts. It also serves to keep the posts from spreading or moving apart. The wire twist can be seen in the photo below. You can even cris-cross the wires to form an X for added strength.
You will want to run a string from corner to corner and measure the string for spacing the T-posts. I marked the string with surveyors tape so I would know where to pound the T-posts.
For a short span, we stretched the wire from corner to corner, measured and marked the wire for driving the T-posts. This span was 70 feet.
This is my husband pushing the wire out while our neighbor pounds in the T-post.
In some places the ground was so hard, we had to get the T-post started, water it, let it soak, pound another inch or two, water it, water it some more, it felt like we were planting trees! A few of them had to soak overnight.
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