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winter electric fencing?

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Hayguy

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looked through the search feature but must'nt be useing the correct title,anyways, to those of you who are bale or swathgrazing useing electric wire to control how much they get, what are you using for posts? do you place them all prior to freeze up? how do you remove them after they have froze in? do you use moveable bases ? thank's all for any input
 
We use rebar posts with screw on Dare insulators (open side down). We pound them in with a small sledge and pull them out by twisting them with a pipe wrench. I am too cheap to buy one, but a small aluminum wrench would be nicer than our steel one.
I either carry the posts in a golf bag (can hang on the saddle horn, etc.) or use a calf sled when the snow gets real deep.
We use portable reels with extra conductive polywire (usually called turbowire or ultrawire).
We have tried aluminum wire and absolutely hate it.
We also have a steel L-7 reel with small aircraft cable on it that we use, again with rebar posts.
 
thank-you RSL, essentially i am using the same stuff as you are, it seems to work well enough but some form of a power driver would be nice :lol: have you ever tried a slide type hammer or pounder like they use for T-posts? no matter how you git -R-done it sure beats starting tractors in this cold. by the way hows the heater in the mini-truck?
 
I use wood posts, drilled and placed before freeze-up at the corners and at the ends of dividing lines. Posts moved day to day are rebar or fibreglass.

Opposite to RSL, I use aluminum wire for control because it's dirt cheap, but not so nice if your using reels.

On the perimeter and dividing fences, I'm using between 12.5 and 14 gauge for more strength and better control.
 
hayguy said:
thank-you RSL, essentially i am using the same stuff as you are, it seems to work well enough but some form of a power driver would be nice :lol: have you ever tried a slide type hammer or pounder like they use for T-posts? no matter how you git -R-done it sure beats starting tractors in this cold. by the way hows the heater in the mini-truck?
We have used a bigger driver, but I like the small sledge as i can carry it in my belt (like Thor :lol: ).
The heater in the little truck is fantastic. We have only hit -30C here so far, but it is awfully nice. I used it for putting slabs on a fence this week at -25 and it was pretty nice to jump in and warm your hands once in awhile. It may actually replace my calf sled for fence moving this winter.
Aaron - the only reason we didn't/don't like aluminum is that our wildlife tended to be very skilled at breaking it and it would roll up into balls/tangles. If we only drove it would likely not be a huge issue, but it was a huge safety issue for saddle horses. We still find the odd tangle in the bush and we have not used aluminum wire for nearly a decade.
 
Bruce said:
Fellow down the road use's a cordless drill to drill "post" holes and drop's rebar in for post's. Seem's to work pretty slick.


is there any way to find out what kind of bit he uses, after reading your post this am iwent out and tried it with limited success . iwas using a concrete/masonary bit, it didn't seem to clean very well,perhaps some other type might work better.
 
These are pictures from a couple of years ago, and changes to the system have been made. Namely, bales are tighter together and the wood posts separating the columns of bales have been replaced with T-posts, which offer the strength I need in the fence without a hole to fill the next spring.

P1010077-1.jpg


P1010045.jpg
 
pictures are worth a thousand words, especially the way i type, thanks

i know what you mean about filling in post holes, lord knows i have enough gopher holes with out making more :!: :lol: :lol:
 
How do the posts into the bales work? Have seen it before just wondering if they are regular length or if you need longer re-bar?
 
Rancher3! said:
How do the posts into the bales work? Have seen it before just wondering if they are regular length or if you need longer re-bar?

Most the ones I use are about 4.5' long. Do use some 5.5' fiberglass ones and they are probably the ideal. Lightweight and long.

Only problems I encounter is with certain cows that are never satisfied with what they have and will drop to their knees and eat under the posts until they fall out of the bale. Also, we get a pile of snow here, so once the cows start walking on 2 feet of snow cover at end of December, you can forget about much in the way of grounding with reference to electric fences. If it gets real bad (cows breaking out), I run a ground wire under the live one and ground to bare rebar in the bales.
 

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