[SteveHants]

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.

[Bramblecot]

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.

[bazzais]

I think owning a field and keeping it fenced is like painting the Severn bridge.

[Small Farmer]

I'll second that.

[Remy]

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!    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!

[FiB]

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)    Cheers F

[Small Farmer]

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

[Pedwardine]

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 

[PetiteGalette]

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...............