property fencing

[DDW_OR]

I know NOTHING about how to put up a good fence
Cattle and goats. first will be 5 goats in 2022 to eat the blackberry and weeds
and then 5 steers, 1/2 for us, 1/2 in hamburger for food bank
sell the other 4
will be buying the hay

have only been "YouTube" taught. so.... :-\

Please add photos or drawings.

what is obvious to you is new to me

several fences needed, in order
First is a narrow pasture i plan to use for quarantine, 2,800 ft total. mostly level
then the property boarder 11,400 ft. level to "mountain goat" steep
then house and buildings 1,100. mostly level

I have a lot of trees that are fence post size 4 to 12 inch. Fir, Pine, cedar

how should i peal the trees. will be using an Arbro 400 stroke harvester.
it may peal most of the tree?

next, what to treat it with.
I have found a local source for 5 gallon copper green $120
do i treat the lower 2 ft, or all. plan to use open top 55 gallon barrels

[LeeB]

I use cedar for corner posts and braces with t-posts in-between. Barbed wire fir the cows and field fence for the goats. 5 strand for the cays. I've been told by the old guys around here that you can keep goats in barbed wire to if you go 7 or 8 strand. I would imagine you would need to have posts pretty tight or at least have pickets between the post for goats if using barbed wire. I usually go with 8 ft spacing for field fence and 5 strand. Goats can crawl under a fence in a pretty narrow opening. Mine do it all the time, mostly after the dogs show them a good spot to do so. They never go anywhere though thankfully. I've only had one disappear in the last 4 years and 1 kid got eaten by the neighbors dog. had trouble with two of my cattle fence crashing. One of them is now in the freezer and the other went to market.

[DDW_OR]

i was thinking 5 strands of barbwire for the steep areas
and wood board or pole for the near flat areas
all will include an additional smooth wire for electric
will ground the bottom barbwire.

[Ianab]

What are you trying to keep in (or out)?

Deer? Needs about 9ft netting fence. 
Cows? A couple of electric wires will keep them in. 
Sheep, 5 wires and battens, their wool is a partial insulator. 
Elephants? Electric fence controller we had out out last place was rated for 5 miles of Elephant resistant fence... You could see the feed wires twitch on each pulse. 
Goats? Give up now... 

The barbed wire has faded away here, a good electric fence works better. 

[SwampDonkey]

For easy pealing of your posts, do it in the spring whenever you see the wild flowers breaking ground. The bark slips off easier.

Up here, two strand of fence wire electrified for cows, one won't keep the calves in, need that lower strand or they will be sampling the neighbor's garden. :D Ceder is the best post wood, will last decades up here, but there is a big difference if it is tight grained with very little sapwood. Field grown stuff grows too fast for a rot resistant post. Talking northern white (we call it eastern white cedar up here). Pretty much any cedar species works, if it has narrow sapwood. We don't put treatment on fence posts up here. If your fencing in horses, lots of folks boarded fence down south, but up here all I ever see is cow fence. My uncle had work horses, which are a lot bigger than a riding horse, they was always kept in with cow fence. Of course they are not a horse that is meant to go jumping hurdles like in the shows.  :D So, your fence might need a 3rd strand and taller posts. Wire is a lot let labour and maintenance than boards. A well placed horse kick and there goes your board in two. :D ;)

[stavebuyer]

For maintaining a property line through the woods T-post and barb wire is the cheapest/easiest option. Trees and limbs are going to take it down and barb wire is easy to patch back.

Pasture fence you want stout corner posts set in concrete and cross braced to pull/stretch woven wire with a strand of barbed wire over the top. Add electric to it if needed. You can get by with several t-posts in between wooden. They are so much easier to set than wood posts they are worth buying even if you have a source of wood posts to cut. Don't go cheap or light in the corners even if you have shell out stupid money for treated.

[Sedgehammer]

What are you trying to keep in (or out)?

Deer? Needs about 9ft netting fence.
Cows? A couple of electric wires will keep them in.
Sheep, 5 wires and battens, their wool is a partial insulator.
Elephants? Electric fence controller we had out out last place was rated for 5 miles of Elephant resistant fence... You could see the feed wires twitch on each pulse.
Goats? Give up now...

The barbed wire has faded away here, a good electric fence works better.

I like what you said about goats. Yeah them are a ordeal. There is goat fence. It's a smaller woven fence that they can't stick their heads through and it's pricey. We dehorned ours and our regular woven wire works fine.


I'll only use woven wire from now on. Barb wire doesn't really work, as the animals will just push their heads and bodied to whatever is on the other side. This keeps stretching the fence. Yes and electric wire helps, but you'd need 3 wires to make it work.


I only use metal pipe cased in cement for corner posts. I use 7". Then with a metal pipe welded towards the top to each post, so 3 pipes. Then woven wire with T posts and I use the heavier T posts. Then I run a hot wire 6" from the bottom and at the very top.
This keeps anything from trying to climb the fence and believe me you, coyotes, bears, wolves and dogs will do so. The wire at the bottom keeps anything from trying to get out.

[Southside]

PVC Timeless fence posts and high tensile wire. Alternate hot and ground wires so an animal touches both at the same time, always gets a full shock no matter what the ground conditions are. 

The key to any electric fence isn't the charger, but the ground. Folks use one ground rod on a 12 joule charger and wonder why nothing stays in when the ground is dry or frozen.  You want a series of ground rods at the charger and halfway around the fence perimeter with an alternating wire set up. It will keep anything in or out. 

[Nebraska]

Except a goat. 

[Sedgehammer]

Except a goat.

So true. Been there, done that. That's why i use woven wire only from now on.

[Nebraska]

I once had a pen that younger me built as a fortress to imprison the goats on the side of the goat barn.   I had the stupid idea to name it Goat Knox.  The took it on as a challenge.....It was  hightensil fencing with alternating hot wires 7 wires tall seems like it ended at about five foot high if I remember right. It's maybe a 50'x 50' pen. Big nasty fencer, made me swear more than once.  It's now a replaced  setup of combination livestock panel reinforced with 2x6 treated wood and a hot wire around the top.  Much lower incidence of goats in the flower bed, or goats on the deck. Most of the pastures are standard 48 inch woven wire field fence with a hot wire on top and one about knee high. Works pretty good til July/August when it gets dry and the grass gets hard.  Unless you can get hedge or the right cedar I wouldn't use an untreated post  on a permanent fence.   Creosote rules in that way. 

[Sedgehammer]

Yeah, smart me did about the same thing. then the goats said dumb you. Cattle panels or woven wire only. Nothing else will work with goats. 

[mike_belben]

what are you guys actually doing with goats ?  eat em?

[farmfromkansas]

I have been building 5 wire fences for cattle, but may go to 6 wires on next project. The gap at the bottom is important, as have lost a couple small calves that would get down on their bellies and crawl under.  Got one back from a neighbor a couple miles away, as I had my phone # on the ear tag. Other one was just gone. Not many will call you when they find your lost calf.

[Will.K]

I started building fence at around 5 years old, just shoveling dirt back in the holes in those days. 

There is a lot of very bad fencing advice online. Here are a few helpful tips that come to mind: Put your posts in the ground. 2 feet is not enough. If you can only get 2 feet use concrete. If you use concrete don't fill the hole with it and don't worry about mixing. Pour in a splash of water and stab with a spud bar. Don't dig a hole three times the size of your post. That wastes time and material makes it harder to get the post tight. Don't put your end posts too close together, this reduces the bracing properties. 8 feet is good. Distance between posts depends on the wire or material. Boards 8' to high tensile 20' or more. 

Posts. I've never seen raw pine posts, they aren't common trees here but I don't think they'd make the best posts. Pressure treated pine gets used all the time and underperforms most other posts. Cedar is excellent. So are black locust, hedge, catalpa, some kinds of oak, and steel ts. Other regional options I don't know about. Cedar needs no peeling of any kind. Heavy bark should be peeled at least on the underground part of the post and on the surface that will take fasteners.

Driven posts are tighter than dug.

Any specific questions?

[WV Sawmiller]

   For goats all fences require the water test - if water will pass through so will a goat. :D Our best, if limited, success with goats was field fence and to be sure to keep an old gentle matriarch goat in there with them who was too old or too lazy to try to get out. Since goats are herd animals they would tend to stay pretty close to her and not wander too far afield. 

   Goats with horns will get them stuck in the wire squares of many web fences. A small kid goat will crawl under any low spots then walk the fence line wanting to get back to its mother. 

   They are great for clearing brush and will create a browse line as high as they can stand on their back legs. They are browsers not grazers and briers and roses are ice cream to them. We cleared 10-15 acres of thick multi-flora roses with them that the horses now maintain. In the winter the goats would eat the tips of the roses and gnaw the bark girdling the large roses killing them at the stump. They will climb a leaning tree and and are not above getting out and on top of your newly restored ragtop '68 Corvette or Mustang if they get the chance.

[Tom King]

If you build board fencing, screw one screw in the top boards for a whole long section, and stand well back to look at it.  You can see which ends you need to cheat up, or down a little, change those, and look again.  Once you have a smooth flow with those top boards, mark the position of the other boards, and put them on.

When you go around a curve, you can't stagger the boards, if you're using long boards, or you will make the posts lean out over time.

I have a how-to posted on a woodworking forums, with pictures that show what a little difference in placement makes, but I'm not sure if we are not supposed to post a link to another forums here.  I'll check back, and if it's okay, I'll post the link.

[Nebraska]

what are you guys actually doing with goats ?  eat em?

Well no actually  I  raise and train goats as pack animals for folks to use out west.  If you're really bored search packgoats. I have threatened  to eat several.

[chevytaHOE5674]

I use 4 or 5 strands of electric high tensile wire. Tposts every 50 feet RR tie corner H-braces. I have 2 grounds and 2/3 hot wires on each run. 

The farm i just bought is going to get steel pipe H-braces for the corners.

[Will.K]

Tom has good advice here about installing boards, here are some slight alternatives: Instead of installing the top row, cut a stick to the length you want the top of the top board. Walk it down the line, marking. You can cheat a little up or down if appropriate. Next run a string and tack in on the line. This is easy to eyeball for good flow and much easier to adjust than a screwed on board. When you're happy with the look of the string, mark again and be sure to x out the rejected marks. Install the top row to your marks, then mark the next row by cutting a block to the desired spacing and butting it against the bottom of the top board. This is good work for the kids, running down the line with a block and pencil. 

When installing boards, if you need to bend up or down, put the first fastener on the top if bending down, or bottom if bending up. That way the tension won't blow off the corner of your board. 

Animals like to eat salt/arsenic treated boards. Horses can chew through pretty fast. If you're treating the lumber yourself, any smearable ratio of kerosene, roofing tar, old stain, used oil, or whatever else you've got lying around works great.

[Will.K]

On treating posts:
I have never done it. Good posts don't need it. Bad posts will rot anyway. Most posts rot right at ground level. Millions of treated pine posts are being held up by wire and habit after only ten or fifteen years. Riven locust posts beside my house were set by my great uncle over fifty years ago, and are still solid and rock hard. 

[farmfromkansas]

Used oil well pipe is gaining here in Kansas, guys are welding up the H corners  and using a pipe every 4 or 5 spaces with T posts between.   They weld chain links onto the pipe and split it with bolt cutters, then put the wire in and hammer it closed. Some think the pipe set in concrete will last longer than hedge posts.  Treated YP posts don't last here. Some have used the old creosote posts in the past, but most of those are gone.  I still have a few skinny hedge posts set before my dad bought this farm in about 1950.  Mostly when I replace them, go with as big as possible. Lot easier to drill a hole with a skidsteer, than my dad digging them in by hand with a stomper.

[Sedgehammer]

what are you guys actually doing with goats ?  eat em?

No. Raised to sell the kids. The kids are a b l a s t ! they are crazy funny.

[Will.K]

What's a stomper?

[Tom King]

Here is the text from my first post, copied and pasted, from my thread on another forums about building board fencing:

This will be 4-board pasture fencing.  We did have it up at the edge of those woods behind it in the picture.  With our numbers of horses way down, we don't need every square foot of pasture, and that spot uphill has been the most trouble for clipping, with gullies, and rock outcroppings, so I decided to move the fence downhill below the problem areas, and just let it grow back up in Pine trees.
For building a nice looking fence on uneven ground, it's better not to just measure off the ground level, and put the boards on.  Posts are set not quite touching strings pulled, high and low, on the side opposite that the boards will go on.  If any post pushes the strings, it gets impossible to keep it nice and straight, whereas staying within a quarter inch of the line makes it look perfectly straight to the eye.
These posts were set on more level ground, up near those woods, and set on 8' centers.  Since the new location is more undulating, I shortened the center spacing to 93 inches, to make sure none of the old boards ran too short.
On both undulations, and curves (made in straight 16' sections so bending boards don't push the posts out over time) you can't stagger the boards, or the spacing gets all wonky.
Once your posts are set, go along and mark every post with a magic marker at the top of the top board location.   In this case, that is five feet.  You only need to mark every other post if it's a fairly flat run, and you are sure all boards will span two post gaps.  On undulating ground, sometimes you will need to use short boards, so go ahead and mark every one.  I didn't do this yesterday, so had to make a second trip down the line after we got to a section that needed short boards to just catch two posts.
 
NOW HERE IS THE TRICK TO MAKING AN UNDULATING FENCE LOOK NICE:
Once you have the top marks, screw the top boards in place with only one screw on each end.   Stand well back and look at it.   Some board intersection locations will need to be cheated up, or down, to make the flowing lines smooth, without zagged slope changes.  We ended up changing over half of the board joints, and one as much as three inches, to get it to look like this. 
We just let the boards run long, and overlap on the posts for now.  When we get back to work on it, I'll take a small chainsaw, and cut the overlapping boards in place to fit on the posts, end to end.
I have plenty of other stuff to do, but wanted to catch this before the ground got hard for digging the holes, even with a 2-man auger, and before the grass started growing, since we have that pasture closed off to the horses until I get the fence done.
edited to add:   After looking at these pictures, I will go back and ease up that second joint from the right.  With only one screw in each end of each board, it's not too much trouble, with a helper.