The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: JMB on June 10, 2012, 09:50:49 am
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Hello again. Just thinking about land rotation and we have a big field we want to split in to two.
We need temporary fencing for a variety of reasons, but I've read that electric fencing is not good for horned sheep (certainly not the netting).
We did have some strip electric fencing for a shetland pony here before and the sheep went under it no problem (um...maybe could have fixed it better..,.it was to keep pony in rather than sheep out).
We are now considering sheep hurdles, but would they work over a larger area?
Thought somebody may have a brilliant idea or experiences they'd like to share.
Thank you, Joanne xxxx
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You're right about the horns and the netting, it is outlawed by the sheep welfare code to keep horned sheep in using the electric netting.
We have found that for temporary to semi permanent use, a roll of wire stock netting combined with 2 inch ish thin posts works pretty well as long as (and this is important) there are scratching posts/items provided in the field.Probably need proper posts at the end but the infill just to hold the netting up the thin ones work ok for us. We used tree stakes as they were the right sort of size.
Of course the fence isnt anything like as strong as a strained one with proper posts but the crucial thing is that we could bash these posts in with a mallet rather than getting into post hole borers and rammers etc. The tree posts are quite tall so we were able to add an extra wire at the top, just to keep the height up, there would have been room for another wire or two.
Might be worth a small experiment anyway....:-)
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We just bit the bullet and put in proper stock fencing to divide our acreage into smaller paddocks for rotation. Since then we have taken one length back out but the materials will be re-used for another stretch.