If you’re considering a burro or other livestock, bear in mind that you’ll have to deal with maure management. You’ll also have to make sure that nothing toxic is growing in their grazing areas. I don’t know for certain about burros, but I know many horse pastures do have to be mowed periodically. The horses don’t eat all the weeds, so they still grow.
A lot of horse people do have fears about barbed wire fencing. However, horse people (at least those I know) are very particular about their fencing: some swear by electric and will have nothing else, while others won’t have anything but post and rail fences. So I would suggest getting the fencing that works best for you.
I would recommend training your dogs not to jump over the fence, rather than relying on the fence exclusively. Regardless of how you make it, they’re likely to find ways around/over/under eventually, unless they aren’t looking. Jumping up onto a terrace isn’t quite like jumping over a fence, but you could certainly extend the fence upwards a bit. But bear in mind that one only needs 6’ of fence to keep in bison, and 8’ to keep in deer, both of which are far better jumpers than dogs.
And I’m going to reiterate my view that electric is unnecessary. You said cost was an issue, and those little insulating standoffs seem cheap when you look at the price, until you start calculating how many posts you have to put them on. Suddenly a 75 cent item is adding 200 bucks to your fence. At the least I’d recommend just putting up the pagewire and your strand or two above it, and see if the dogs try to dig under before shelling out for a fencer and insulators. If you do end up putting in a hot wire close to the ground, you’re going to have to figure out how to keep it clear from plant growth. Gas powered weed wacker around the perimeter a couple times a month, I’d imagine.
Just to clarify a little: in my experience, whether or not livestock ends up outside the fence depends far more on the livestock than it does on the fence. Cows that don’t challenge fences will remain inside decrepit old fences, and cows that do challenge fences will get out of shiny new 5-strand electrified barbed wire. Yes, the fence does have to pose a non-trivial barrier, but it doesn’t need to be (and probably can’t be) foolproof. As I said, it’s a psychological barrier, not a physical barrier.
I’ll heed this advice. Two strands of wire is cheap enough that if I end up needing it I won’t be out much…
On the subject of wire, any opinions on going all high tensile and skipping the woven wire entirely? If I spaced it closely enough near the ground, I don’t think I’d have to worry about crawling out between the strands, and it would be quite a bit cheaper then the woven wire: Not only the materials, but I’d have to buy fewer tools tools, and, with the possible exception of the corner braces, I’m thinking it would be possible for one person to install?
Are there any herbicides that could be sprayed under the perimeter that would decrease weed-whacking frequency?
(I didn’t intend to come off as questioning your knowledge in my first reply–I appreciate your advice…)
We put up about 150’ feet of 2"x 4" wire grid by 5’ tall fence that encloses about 2000 square feet behind our house. The house makes up half of the border, or limit, to where the dog can go. This is for our recently adopted Border Collie. I also installed a doggie door in a wall of the house so that she can do her business when ever she wants to. The fence is supported by 7’ tee stakes driven 2 feet into the ground. I also built two access gates into the area. A man gate made of 1x4s and a 4x4 post sunk into the ground that the wooden gate swings on. For larger access, I built a frame out of ¾" copper pipe, soldering it together. The frame is about 4 feet tall and 10 feet wide. 4 pieces of copper pipe, 4 elbows. I then zip tie a piece of fence to that frame. Then, I attach the whole cabob to existing T posts with zip-ties, wire whatever. When I need to get my tractor or truck into the fenced off area (maybe once a year), I cut the zip-ties, move the whole ‘gate’ and drive in.
If you use T posts, do not bother trying to pound them in with a regular sledge hammer. By a tube sledge It’s a 3"x3’ piece of pipe with one end closed and some handles welded on it. You slid it over the T stake and just go to town on it. Much, Much better than a sledge.
The fence posts and wire for such a job would be a couple of hundred $ at most.
Tractors are great to have, but you are just into a new house. It may need other attention. I would start out small. Get to know your yard, and how your dogs are doing. A smaller fenced off enclosure may do fine in the short run. Then you can decide if you want to fence the entire property or not.
You’re moving from an apartment to 5 acres, and it’s your first house. It may take a few years to get to know the ‘lay of the land’. and be buying a number of different tools. I think it’s great. I love having a bit of property, and a house I can call my own.
I’m not sure of the quality of the tractor I referenced. But, I have heard great things about Kubota tractors. I think the tractor that Northern sells uses the same engine. http://www.kubota.com/
I’m really not sure. We generally don’t build fences for dogs. It’s likely possible, I suppose, with high tensile and keeping the posts a bit closer. You’d need to run quite a few strands closely spaced, though, because even with high tensile wire you can deflect it a fair bit between posts. Offhand I can’t think of any part of putting up that sort of fence that would require more than one person. Even corner braces should be possible, if you’re careful to cut the horizontal brace exactly the right length so that it sits snugly in the notches before you nail it into place. And yeah, pagewire is a whole different sort of job to string. We have always used a tractor to pull it taut, but with a bit of ingenuity you might be able to use a truck. Wouldn’t get the same sort of tension, though, since you don’t have any of those low low gears. Still, pagewire doesn’t really need to be very tight. Other than tightening it, I don’t see what other tools you’d need. Hammer, staples, and wire cutters. You need all those for high tensile, too. What else are you thinking that you’ll need?
On second thought, you might go with the high tensile, say, 6 strands at 8", 16", 24", 32", 44", and 56", and then put a fencer on the wires at 16" and 32". Tie the wires at 8" and 24" to a grounded rod. Contact between a hot wire and a grounded wire will result in a good zap regardless of dry ground, etc, and you’d only need to keep the foliage below 16". The dogs would be unlikely to try digging, because they’d associate the fence with getting zapped. You don’t need much current for dogs, so you won’t need a top of the line fencer, and what you spend on a low end fencer and insulators for two wires will likely be a lot less than the expense of the pagewire. Without the fencer, I’d think that most dogs would go through a fence like this, though.
I suppose you could go round with a spraycan full of glyphosphate (Roundup and its generic equivalents), which is inexpensive if you buy it in a big jug at the farm centre rather than the little jug at the garden centre. I believe it’s ineffective against things with woody stems, so shrubby stuff would survive, but it will do for anything and everything else. It wouldn’t be very dangerous to the dogs, either, though they should be kept out of the area for a day or so. It’d result in a strip of dead grass, though, which would be kinda ugly.
I was looking at high-tensile woven wire–according to the manufacturer, I’d need a pair of stretcher bars, a couple of pullers, and a crimping tool. $350 at a minimum, I think.
Here’s where they describe putting it up. They had a local dealer who used the stuff himself, gave some layout advice, referred me to contractors who could pound the posts, etc…
Using some rough numbers (comparing the fabric to wire, insulators, and charger), the high-tensile-only fence would be 1/4 to 1/3 the cost of just the woven wire…
It’s looking better and better (especially since I could do it alone…).
The breed is rare enough in this area that I could be identified easily if I named it, but suffice it to say they’re very athletic, tall, and tough to train. They’re not known for digging. I’d be way more worried about one of them running into the fence at speed, which would is my one lingering concern about the high-tensile route…
Enipla, I’ve thought of using that stuff as a temporary “backyard” fence until I get something more permanent up in a few months. How far apart did you set the T-posts? Did you have to do any bracing at the corners, or is it under very little tension?
Blah. You don’t need all that stuff. Easy enough to improvise the tension issue. Give me a spare fence post and a couple come-alongs or fencing tackles and I can come up with something. You don’t need to crimp, either, though it would make a neat job. But you could just as easily loop the wire back and wrap it around itself. Might be tough to do with high-tensile pagewire, but with ordinary stuff it works fine, and it would probably be less expensive (though you’d probably want closer pole spacing if it weren’t high tensile).
You’re planning on getting someone else to put in the posts, I take it? That’s not generally a one person job, unless you plan on drilling holes and tamping each one in…you’d be at it for weeks. Hydraulic pounders are the cat’s ass, but usually one needs a tractor to operate one, so contracting it might be cheaper than renting, and certainly less work. Hopefully they do a good job, keep the posts in a straight line and don’t have them leaning much. Crooked fences with leaning posts only look good if they’re half rotted and covered in lichen with rusty wire and are next to some weathered old unpainted outbuildings in the sunset.
I wouldn’t be overly concerned. They’ll only do it once. Dzzzzzzt. Yelp! Yelp! Seriously, though, it shouldn’t be a huge concern. They won’t get tangled up. Even in barbed wire that’d be rare, and with high tensile it’s just not an issue. They won’t get cut up, either. Worst case is probably puppies getting through and then not being able to find their way back, but that’s going to be a possibility with most anything short of a 5’ concrete wall. The last fence I helped build (6’ tall, 5 strand high tensile, 3 of which are hot) bison calves just bounce off unscathed. Adult bison hitting the fence at full speed would go right through it, but it’s just not economically viable to build a fence that’ll stop 2000lbs moving at 50kph.
Just a word about fencing. I have some experience in this area since I spent my youth bailing hay and building fence and we have lived on a 20 acre farmette for the past 15 years.
The woven wire fence is over kill and unnecessarily expensive unless you are going to keep free range pigs. The standard for a lawful fence is “cow high and pig tight.” If you don’t have pigs then all your have to worry about is “cow high.”
That effectively means that barbed wire or high tensile is your logical choice. Because we keep horses and once had small children and will have small grand children we have been replacing the woven wire and barbed wire on the place with high tensile wire – mostly five strand fencing. A horse will avoid barbed wire but when (not if) one gets tangled in the stuff it is a nightmare. Small city raised kids and barbed wire are a bad combination too.
Woven wire does require a fair amount of expense to instal and maintain. Especially if you chose to do it your self. You need to use wooden posts, those posts need to be at eight or ten foot intervals. You do need a crimping tool. High tensile is just too stiff to wrap back on itself like soft iron wire. You do need to put a tensioner on each wire on each stretch or the fence will go slack in hot weather and tighten enough in bitterly cold weather to tear its self apart.
The good news is that high tension has a considerably longer life than woven wire or barbed wire, especially if your fence crosses a waterway. That longer life balances out the higher cost of high tensile. The other good news is that almost any rural community has a couple of out fits that build fence on a commercial basis. I assure you that the cost of a commercial construction is reasonable when you consider the value of your own time, the likelihood that you will screw it up, the cost of the equipment (crimpers, tractor with auger, fence stretcher) and the medical bills. Check with you local farm supply store for fence builders. The store will probably be willing to tell you who does this stuff well and at a fair cost.
There’s no reason to cut lots of grass; it’s a waste of time and money. Just cut around the house. Of our 15 acres, I only cut about 4. I let the rest grow wild. And the wildlife loves it.
Livestock? Only if you really want them. We don’t have any. For one thing, you need a good fence, as others have mentioned. And then they eat everything in sight, which IMO destroys the land. But I still like animals, and this year I’m going to get some bee hives. (Unlike livestock, bees are good for your land.)
Do not get a big farm tractor. (You know, the kind with tall, skinny tires.) Instead, get a lawn tractor. I bought a used Simplicity w/ 24 HP engine. It meets all our needs. I would also suggest not getting one of those super fast/zero-radius grass-cutting machines. While they are indeed fast, they’re not versatile.
Having never owned a dog or put up a fence, my comments may be of little value. But if a dog is all you’ll be keeping, a fence may be a rather expensive and maintenance-hungry option.
Perhaps you should look at alternatives such as a really long overhead tether (to give the dog a place to run that’s, say, 50 by 20 meters). Or how about undertaking to train the dog so it doesn’t run off? Dunno how you do that, but I have at least 3 friends with large grounds and free-roaming dogs, so I assume it’s not enormously difficult. Does anyone make a variant of an anti-bark collar that negatively reinforces a dog that strays too far from home base?
I’m in the group that feels borders without fences may be an option worth considering.
(especially since I could do it alone…).
Seriously, though, it shouldn’t be a huge concern. They won’t get tangled up. Even in barbed wire that’d be rare, and with high tensile it’s just not an issue. They won’t get cut up, either. Worst case is probably puppies getting through and then not being able to find their way back, but that’s going to be a possibility with most anything short of a 5’ concrete wall. The last fence I helped build (6’ tall, 5 strand high tensile, 3 of which are hot) bison calves just bounce off unscathed. Adult bison hitting the fence at full speed would go right through it, but it’s just not economically viable to build a fence that’ll stop 2000lbs moving at 50kph.