Advice on high tensile fence

I am going to be using wood post for corners and every so often throughout the fence, all others will be steel t posts. First, do I need to put in wood posts every so often or would steel posts be ok? Im going up probably 100 yds and over maybe 40 yds. How far should the posts be spaced from eachother and is a 5 wire high tensile enough to keep three black angus heifers in?

I personally use pressure treated corner post( telephone or 6-8 ") painted bottoms and put in concrete. 1 metal t post every 15 foot with a wood post about every 150 - 200 foot. The main thing is to get corner post anchored firmly in the grd. 5 strands will hold your heifers.

Don't forget to build H-braces at each corner. I have 6 wire HiT and on one real short run I didn't put an H-brace. 6" post, 40" deep in concrete is already leaning. Needless to say I'll be putting a brace on it this summer.

5 wire should hold your cattle easily. Most folks around here use 1 or 2 wires for cattle. 6 wires holds in my sheep just fine.

My advice would be forget the high tensil and use woven wire. I had eight strands up and could not turn cattle. The worse part was the wire got scattered and wound up getting wrapped around a bush hog spindle. Had to cut it off with a torch. If I were going to use it I would electrify some of the strands.

as justin said use H-braces on your corners. I have 4 wires with elect. elect is inportant on calves forsure

If you dont put electric on a few wires they will have your t-post bent over and the calves will walk right through it , the smooth wire wont slow em down . I put alot of it up for others and it s nice to put up and easy to repair but I go with 5 runs of the small size barbwire at my house , hard to improve on somethings . With barbwire all you need is wire , post and staples , no electric no gadgets just fence .

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Kencove Fence

Lots of good information on line provided by manufacturers. I would never use high tensile without some of the wires electrified. Spacing on line posts depends on whether you have some strands electrified and also how your ground lays. Flat ground the spacing can be further apart than on hilly ground. If fence is electrified it is a psycological pain barrier. If not then it is a physical barrier. Your choice. Good luck!

Pete

Yep you have to electrify for it to work. So why bother with 5 strands. Put in one electric strand or go with 5 barbs and then you will have a fence that needs no electric.

I have 5 strand barbed fences that are 30 years old and are still fine. They are not lot fences they are pasture fences.

Gary

High tensile was tried around 'here' a few years ago; doesn't work for cattlemen. We get about 45-48 inches of rain per year and the honeysuckle, multiflora roses, etc. take it over and the cattle will stick their head thru and eventually walk out. Since you're only doing a few hundred yards, you may can keep it 'clean'......or you may not have the problems with vines that we do.

You will probably think that I'm crazy, but here's what worked for me and 10 - 20 head of Angus. :shock: Gate posts and corner posts were 3-4 inch treated wood driven about 30 inches deep (no bracing) line posts were 3 ft x 1 inch square grade stakes driven 10 inches deep at 30 ft spacing (no corners) wire was 1 strand of #14 steel at 2 ft above ground! and 1 HIGH ENERGY fence charger! :shock: Used this system for 15 years with excellent results. :roll:
8)

I use a lot of High tensile if i have electric close enough to get it hot pasture boundaries are 4 wires all are hot once they get used to it being hot they wont try it if the electric goes out I also use it for lot fences 6 wires bottom 2 and top 3 are hot 3rd one is grounded at every other post we wean calves in these lots and get along fine They are used to the electric fence and will not try the lots I did not put braces in in the short stretches that are a bout 400 ft long in front of barn but now wish I had

i have 5 strands of high tensile wire. wood posts every 100' 3' in ground.
4' fiber ; glass spreaders every 25'.
when i do next i will go every 50' for the wood post.
i will use high tensile wire for corner brace wires.
contact dareproducts.com they have a very helpful booklet.
i got one at farm & fleet

my f-i-l farms in N. MO and has used hi-tensile hot wires to divide his pastures for years. There's places where he has to spray a little or chop out weeds now and then, but overall, he gets along pretty well with a hot fencer. He uses a good big corner post for relatively short runs, less than 200 yards, then fiberglass posts in between. We just fixed his weaning pen, 3 wires, all hot over the weekend.

My neighbor here in EC Iowa amazes me though. He runs sheep on his home place with 5 or 6 strands of smooth high tensile with a wood and steel posts w/ insulators. He's set up to electrify every other wire, but claims he only did it for the first year, and when his fencer quit, he never replaced it. He also runs some sheep through the summer on my place with only a single hot wire on small round posts powered by a solar charger. I never figured you could keep them in like that, but he's never had a problem

Reid,

The great thing about HT is you don't need as many post as you think. I have one stretch along a creek bottom that is close to 500 yards with out a wood post any where but the corner braces. On flat ground a T-post will work every 50' to 75'. On hilly ground, put one where ever you need to, to keep the wires the correct space apart, off the ground, and close to the ground in low spots.

A few words of advice from some one who started putting it up on their own 10 years ago with out any clue as to what they were doing and learned things the hard way. Get 175,000 lb wire and not the 200,000 lb, it ties better and is much better to work with. Get the good pin lock insulators, not the kind that you have to twist 90 degrees to get on the wire and then have to snap or nail onto the post. Yes if you take'm off and on a few times you will lose the pin but a 10 penny nail works fine too, as long as you don't bend it where it will touch the post. I like the spinner tighteners better than the ratchet type, just don't skinp and think you can use them with a half inch ratchet wrench (this will make you loose your religion quick). And a last thought, start on the back side of the farm, where no one but you will see it. Till you get the hang of twisting and splice'n the stuff it won't look too pretty.

(oh just about forgot this, BUY OR BUM A SPINNING JENNY AND NEVER EVER FOR ANY REASON WHAT SO EVER, CUT THE BANDS ON A SPOOL IF IT AIN'T IN THE GENNY ALSO NEVER EVER TAKE A PART OF A SPOOL OUT OF SAID JENNY UNLESS YOU PUT AT LEAST 5 WRAPS OF DUCK TAPE AROUND IT IN ATLEAST 4 PLACES. Ever had a birds nest in side a fishing reel?)

Good luck,

Dave

Forgot this, here you can down load the manual from Gallagher, should help you out some. If you have a Gallagher dealer close to you, they should have the printed manuals where you can keep it in the truck or on the four wheeler while you out in the pasture and have pics to look at.

Dave
poke here

We don't bother bracing the corners. The last bunch I put down were old power poles set at 4-5' in an auger hole just slightly larger than the pole and tamped in with gravel. Thus far they haven't started leaning.
All of our wire, springs, tensioners and a lot of the insulators are Gallagher.
Avoid single nail insulators. They arc across the nail when you have a big energizer. 2 nail are better and the pin type are the best that I've found.
We ran mostly 2 wire but I'd suggest going with 3 wire if you've got calves. They can either go under it if it's too high or through it if it's too far apart...
With a good three wire setup you can then partition off blocks for them with poly wire as needed. All I ever do with posts, either wood or portable is space them to keep the wire off the ground or keep the sag out. I'm not big on adding extra. The wire doesn't meen a damn to the cows. It's the heat on the wire that stops them...
Remember... Big energizer and get it grounded VERY well with several ground rods. The energizer should send out 10-20 joules.
If you're not committed to spending the bucks on a good energizer, grounding it right and keeping the growth down somewhat on the fence rows, go with some form of non-energized fence.

I rather like electric myself. I ran down most of the pagewire with the dozer 7 or 8 years ago. We spent a few years of trying to maintain electric over top of bad pagewire too because the old man couldn't part with the pagewire...
That just doesn't work. Go one way or the other.

Rod