The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: DartmoorLiz on January 22, 2012, 10:17:18 am
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Hi,
I joined the forum yesterday but have been lurking for a while and have learned loads.
I am becoming more involved in managing the family smallholding and I was wondering what people's experiences were with electric fencing sheep. I have a mains electric fence unit.
Liz
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If you are thinking of using a line of electric tape (as for horses or cows) it is very likely that a full fleeced sheep on a dry day just marches straight through. And lambs have no repsetct for it either. Having said that I have used it successfully for adult ewes, but you have to make sure that the grass on the other side is not much greener.... Won't keep a tup in with ewes in the right wind direction though...
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If you are using the mesh type of temporary fencing, you must be very careful with horned or woolly sheep. They can get their heads stuck in the mesh, caught by wool or horns, then they struggle to get out, become entangled in the fence and either get electrocuted or strangled. This type of fence may even be banned for horned sheep, as they can catch a horn just by grazing too closely to the fence. Stranded wire would be better.
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Over her(in Germany) sheep in netting fences is the norm. Many people have a small/tiny flock in a single span of netting. My het is about 100 metres long. I make a box with it that slowly travels over the field. My few sheep test the fence regularly so I need to make sure I keep the battery charged. My friend has a very old tatty netting fence around a whole field and doesnt get too many escapes(I think its because hers stay in one place and mine are used to moving, so try to move themselves instead of waiting for me to move the fence.....Horned sheep here are not common, but people use nets for goats too.
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Electric fencing is banned under the Defra welfare code for horned sheep, tho it can be used for unhorned (polled) sheep.
I also have problems with it with older lambs (dont try it with young ones) as they dont seem to have much common sense and get stuck in it. So I have lots of rolls of it but try not to use it much, tho it may work better in places with very good grass so less temptation and also I do have Shetlands who are (i) clever and (ii) escapees if they sense better pickings elsewhere.
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I currently use three strand tape and a bottom hotwire for my rams. they have a electric fenced paddock which they have access to during the day and I bring them in at night. so no escapees and no problems with horns. My sheep are "educated" on electric tape as lambs using an internal division on an otherwise fully fenced area; Lambs and some juveniles will break the fence several times until they get the message but the only difficulty afterwards is getting them to move across the imaginary line where the tape once was . do not try keeping them in if you are lacking in grasss there is always one willing to test it out and wool is a good insulator.
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We use stock fence where it really matters around the edges of our land and reels of tape to manage strip grazing within that (Rappa reels and three lines).
Ours aren't big jumpers but I still reckon to use five lines between paddocks and keeping everything taut. There's a case for having the bottom wire earthed so they get a really good spap when they experiment. But if they really want to get out they will - hence the stock fence where it matters.
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Hello liz :)
I've only been farming for 3 years and so am a novice really too.
I bought loads of electric fence cos thought it would work instead of putting up fencing, but it turned out to be a bit of a nightmare especially if there is juicy feed on the other side of the fence.
I'd only ever use electric fence now if I knew :-
a. it would never loose charge (which with a mains fence is all good)
b. they had experienced the charge while i was watching or they 'know' what it does.
I've sat and watched lambies stick their head through and shake and get caught with shock - I'm never using it for lambies again. If the fence goes off its the worst as mine just seem to clammer over it, through it, get messed up in it and need rescuing :)
If I have fencing out thats electric, I like to check it a few times a day.
Its almost as cheap these days to stick some temp posts in and a roll of wire?
Baz
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They will still get stuck in a wire fence - but it wont kill them in 10 minutes like an electric one :)
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I find electric fencing doesn't really work with lambs but the ewes respect it. In fact, I don't leave the energiser on over night - too many thieves about - but the sheep don't notice (Sssh, don't tell them it's not live1)
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It's worth mentioning that a well installed mains energiser will put a lot more energy into each pulse than any battery unit, perhaps ten times as much. That's enough to burn off vegetation that touches the wire/rope/tape, and enough to give you a hell of a belt when you accidentally lean on it. Wet grass touching the fence can leak away most of the power - if you're getting only 2-3,000 volts then a lot of sheep won't notice it. They do tend to notice 8-9,000 volts quite a bit faster...
We had trouble with our fence a couple of years after it went in. That came down to poor earthing which we temporarily fixed by pouring water onto the earth spike. I fixed it for good by buying three long earth stakes and driving them into good shaded soil some metres apart.
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Thanks everyone,
Lots of information and help. As I'm starting out I don't think its worth the investment when I'll probably put up post and wire in the end so I'll do it from the start.
I'll start a new thread in "land management" regarding getting mains electric fencing over or under a quiet country road as I'm sure others have solved this difficulty.
Meanwhile ... am I the only person to be deeply disappointed with the quality of preservation of wooden stakes. They are tannilised but I have one fence which has lasted only 5 years before the posts are breaking where the post meets the ground. Its heart breaking, putting your best effort into making a really good post and wire fence with box struts and tight wires which then needs repair/replacement so soon!
What solutions has anyone found?
Liz
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box struts what are they :farmer:
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Thanks everyone,
Lots of information and help. As I'm starting out I don't think its worth the investment when I'll probably put up post and wire in the end so I'll do it from the start.
I'll start a new thread in "land management" regarding getting mains electric fencing over or under a quiet country road as I'm sure others have solved this difficulty.
Meanwhile ... am I the only person to be deeply disappointed with the quality of preservation of wooden stakes. They are tannilised but I have one fence which has lasted only 5 years before the posts are breaking where the post meets the ground. Its heart breaking, putting your best effort into making a really good post and wire fence with box struts and tight wires which then needs repair/replacement so soon!
What solutions has anyone found?
Liz
I to am very dissapointed with the quality of posts one 3 acre paddock o fence off 5 yrs ago icould walk round and would find 25% of them have broken at ground level, unfortunately its something ive come to live with and just replace as and when :(
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A farmer friend with a post puncher helped us with out fences 7 years ago. He bought cheap posts and quite a lot started hanging in the breeze from about 5 years old. The ones we put in 5 years ago are mostly good as new, but a few have rotted.
As you say, you just get used to fixing them
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I use electric fences all the time, but wouldnt use them too near roads etc. I find three strands of wire works best, you can forget the flat white tape, it doesn't seem to give enough of a shock.
Never used flexinet for much other than repairing holes in fences as a temporary thing whilst I'm waiting for the landowner to fix them. Flexinet (unelectrified) is good for guiding sheep into a pen or blocking off driveways etc when walking them from one field to another.
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Glad I am not alone re the fencing. We paid a fortune for a well known local firm to 'properly' fence our new field with post and rail/stock netting - 6 years later it is swaying in the wind. The soil is heavy clay.
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I think owning a field and keeping it fenced is like painting the Severn bridge. ;)
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I'll second that.
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Fencing figures highly on our land maintenance list! But we did get our entire boundary stock fenced with a top line of electrified wire to keep larger animals (horses and cows) from rubbing on it. It was initially expensive but worth it for the peace of mind, especially for the sheep. I am the only farm on our lane that livestock hasn't escaped from! :D If I want to subdivide the fields I use three lines of stranded wire at sheep level, sheep can and will walk right through tape without feeling it. I wouldn't feel comfortable using electric only as a boundary with a road or any other public highway.
I've had my stock fencing in a few years now and apart from some posts leaning a bit, it's all intact!
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Great to know - I want to divide up a large field this year after hay cutting and was hoping I could use my wire electric fencing after the pigs are gone. Daft question alert - if you are just doing a straight line of 3 wires - how do you make the circuit - one continuous wire wound back and forth or do you join them at each end with other bits of wire between the three? (Me and physics have been a long time apart) :D Cheers F
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Obviously the circuit is made through the animal (or farmer) to earth so as long as each wire is connected to the others it will work.
How you do this is a matter of distance and choice. Zig-zagging is ok for a short distance but makes both tensioning the wire and any future change of plan more complicated. If you use three seperate lines then link the wires at one of the ends.
Wire is best for permanence and low-loss transmission but is incompatible with horses. Tape and rope are easy to use and bodge well but are harder to keep tensioned. I've never found a use for string. Cheap tape lacks the number of conductors and cross linking found in better tapes, and can be short-lived because of UV damage
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I hate net electric fencing. It breaks easily and is a sod to repair but mostly I hate it 'cause sheep get tangled in it, not regularly, but enough to be a reason not to have it. We had one lamb got caught in it and obviously got more and more tangled within it as each shock happened. We arrived too late though she was still warm so it hadn't happened long before. It was the most distressing thing I've experienced :'(. Cried for days after, mostly 'cause I felt that it could have been avoided. We now have an energiser that cuts out upon contact which we use when we have lambs in the paddock. Still, I wish we'd never gone for the dreadful stuff. Problem was it was rented land and the landowner didn't want stock fencing posts ruining the pretty outlook on their field. Only other option was leccy fencing. They felt bad about it too. Stuck with the stuff now. I would have gone for the wire in hindsight though everything has it's advatages and disadvantages. On my own field I have stock fencing, the posts on which my donkeys help to kill by eating! They've even nibbled with creosote on, the stupid equines ???
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We have 3 ewes and a horned ram behind electric fencing - the smaller chicken stuff - and have had no problems whatsoever. Having had a 'belt' from the mains powered fence when trying to sneak something out of my bucket before I got through the gate, they seem to treat it with respect.
After lambing I think they'll be in the old potager (with sheep netting and posts) for a while before going out with the others...............