Wire rope for electric fence

[Rancher3!]

Was wondering if anyone has ever tried 1/16 galvanized cable for hot wire. Had alot of trouble with wildlife breaking the wire last year while bale grazing. Any and all imput is appreciated.

 

[Hayguy]

http://www.7llivestockequipment.com/

haven't talked to these folks but do see on their site that they are using 1/16 aircraft cable. might be worth a call

 

[cowwrangler]

the only bad thing is all the little wires to make up the cable ,it uses more juice cause of all the lil shorts,if you dont have a large area it would work better,or buy the biggest fencer you can,it takes alot to break a high tensile wire,might work in this case

 

[George]

I got a spool of the wire in the rope ( white ) free a while back and I put it around the house so that people would see it better.

Everywhere else I use Hi tensil - - - the deer knock it down some but it rarly breaks.

 

[RSL]

http://www.7llivestockequipment.com/

haven't talked to these folks but do see on their site that they are using 1/16 aircraft cable. might be worth a call

We run a 7L reel as a portable alley for winter grazing and it works great. The aircraft cable carries a good current and consistently runs at 9.6kV+ all winter (with a good fencer behind it). The reel we use has over 3/4 mile of cable on it.

If you have a good wire roller straight high tensile wire works OK too.

 

[cure]

I have had the same problem with deer on the river taking out my fence and I use the 1/16 cable last year I switched to the ribbon and haven't had any problems since. On the down side it is very expensive but I only needed 200 feet so it was worth the extra money by the time I figure fuel and time everyday it paid for it self real fast

 

[Hayguy]

http://www.7llivestockequipment.com/

haven't talked to these folks but do see on their site that they are using 1/16 aircraft cable. might be worth a call

We run a 7L reel as a portable alley for winter grazing and it works great. The aircraft cable carries a good current and consistently runs at 9.6kV+ all winter (with a good fencer behind it). The reel we use has over 3/4 mile of cable on it.

If you have a good wire roller straight high tensile wire works OK too.

have you had anything to do with their power reels RSL

 

[George]

I keep a bucket with the most needed fence supplies on the Grand daughter's golf cart - - - I got tired of searching the bucket for what I needed so I mounted ( sip ties ) 4 Quart oil cans with the tops cut off in the bucket.

Insulators in the bottom of the bucket, tools at hand.

But you need to check the fence to see what shape it is in.

6.6 Kvolts as dry as it is OK!

Of course some of the cows have to check us checking the fence!

This is how you get around if you have 5 miles of fence to check - - -but almost every corner or branch has a switch so we only need to drive the section we determin is pulling power.

Plenty of reflective tape - - - you can't be to safe!

 

[littlejoe]

We needed a couple miles of fence to utilize native grass interspersed with crp. Tried regular elec fence wire. Damn near invisible and antelope would scatter it for miles. And no use for it later. Went to t posts, gallager insulators and regular barb wire. Ain't supposed to use it, as a kid could maybe get snagged and jolted for a while---but out where it was, no kids and lotsa rattlesnakes. An $80 fencer will run a couple miles of it, good pickup battery will last about a mo. Barbless wire oughta be way cheaper than cable. Our cows grow up around it---one strand will keep them in calving pasture and also outa haystacks.

 

[RSL]

http://www.7llivestockequipment.com/

haven't talked to these folks but do see on their site that they are using 1/16 aircraft cable. might be worth a call

We run a 7L reel as a portable alley for winter grazing and it works great. The aircraft cable carries a good current and consistently runs at 9.6kV+ all winter (with a good fencer behind it). The reel we use has over 3/4 mile of cable on it.

If you have a good wire roller straight high tensile wire works OK too.

have you had anything to do with their power reels RSL

I have seen them, but they aren't real handy for us. It is basically a 9/16 socket on a shaft connected to a starter motor. You hook up the truck battery and press the button. You can do the same with a big cordless drill. The handle in the reel is just a crank with a socket on the end.

For checking we use Speedrite testers with the fencer control option. We have 2 fencers now that have the ability to turn them off with the tester from anywhere on the fence, and it shows you which direction to go to get to any faults, as well as output voltage and amperage. They are very slick and save tons of time when you start talking about multiple miles of fence powered off a charger. We set the fencers up to work on the same channel, so the same tester works for all our fences. Test, Turn off, Test, Fix - in that order...Learned the hard way :idea:

 

[Rancher3!]

Thanks for the help. Talked to one guy who said to use a large spring inline so it would have some give. I am a long way from anything as well, wondering maybee about single strand barbed wire, would be strong and cheap.

 

[bverellen]

Don't understand how barbed or barbless wire is a cheaper alternative.

4000 ft. of 12.5 ga. Hi-Tensile is only $100 at any farm supply store.

Makaing it visible is a challenge, any suggestions?

bart.

 

[Hayguy]

have tied short lengths of used baler twine to the wire to give some visibility

 

[GM88]

Talked to a friend of mine the other day, he sells speed rite fencers and he said he was selling 1/ 16 inch cable on 4000 foot rolls. I am going to try some cause swath grazing with the string does not work well over long distances, deer break it all the time. It is not much more expensive then the high tensile wire and easier to roll up.

 

[jodywy]

Talked to a friend of mine the other day, he sells speed rite fencers and he said he was selling 1/ 16 inch cable on 4000 foot rolls. I am going to try some cause swath grazing with the string does not work well over long distances, deer break it all the time. It is not much more expensive then the high tensile wire and easier to roll up.

brother worked for the guy that manages some Orvis properties here, he was crossing fish ponds with poly wire to keep the pelicans off last spring, the ducks would land and break the wire he spliced wire twice a day in chest waders all spring

 

[RSL]

Talked to a friend of mine the other day, he sells speed rite fencers and he said he was selling 1/ 16 inch cable on 4000 foot rolls. I am going to try some cause swath grazing with the string does not work well over long distances, deer break it all the time. It is not much more expensive then the high tensile wire and easier to roll up.

We probably have a dozen speedrite geared reels and they work great with the turbo wire. It is more conductive than the regular string and lets you cover a lot more distance without losing current.
We use the 1/16 cable for a long alleyway just because it is more conductive and easier to clamp the portable reels to, and easier to wind up than high tensile. We do fence with temporary high tensile for our swath grazing but we have a wire roller built by my brother that works for that job.

High tensile wire is cheap. If you are in Canada try looking on kijiji. Our last 10 rolls (3/4 of a mile per roll) were $50 each.

 

[GM88]

RSL How do you roll up the high tensile wire. Do you put a drag on it. The 1/16 inch cable was quoted to me for 125.00$ for a 4000 foot roll. Does it work well for you.

 

[RSL]

RSL How do you roll up the high tensile wire. Do you put a drag on it. The 1/16 inch cable was quoted to me for 125.00$ for a 4000 foot roll. Does it work well for you.

We generally unroll in the fall, and roll up in the spring, and only use 1 roll of high tensile. We have a hydraulic pump for the wire roller, but have not got it hooked up yet (one of those later, never kind of jobs). a bit of weight helps at the end, but 3/4 of a mile of wire dragging on the ground has a lot of resistance in itself.
The cable rolls really nicely since it is highly flexible. I plan to build an extended 9/16" bit for the drill to fit into our 7L to roll cable, but we are usually only rolling out/up 100 to 200' at a time. We have a permanent fence running north/south with the 7L on the north end of the fence about 20' to the east of the permanent fence. We pull the cable out to an anchor post at X distance, creating an alley that runs north/south. Then we run a speedrite reel due east from the south end of the 7L cable. We run another speedrite reel south of that headed due east from the permanent fence to create a paddock that is oriented east/west with a north/south alley out of the NW corner. When it is time to move cows we then leapfrog the 7L cable to the south speedrite reel and spool the next south reel from the permanent fence.
The 7L reel was pricey but it has doubled our grazing days in the first year on the acreage we use it on. I expect to see that double again over the next 2 years.
For our swath grazing we split the field with high tensile (once a year) and then leapfrog reels down the field. With so many reels I can set up enough that I can go away for 2 weeks and not have to worry about chores at all. We will do the same with our bale grazing. Average chore time spent feeding in winter for 200 cows and 200 feeder calves is right around 1/2 hour a week, although we will still check calves every day.

 

[bverellen]

RSL;

While swath grazing with your system, how do you adress water needs?

bart. †

 

[RSL]

RSL;

While swath grazing with your system, how do you adress water needs?

bart. †

Just by chance the water is in the north end of all the fields we swath graze, so they start at the north and work south and come up to drink. The lazy cows don't bother, they just eat snow. When we swath graze we just keep making the paddock bigger until it is all gone.

On winter grass we will pump water if there is no snow or it is poor quality, but most of the cows just stay out and eat snow.