Bradford Family
God's hand at work in Roxbury
Electric Net Fencing
Well, this is mostly an experiment at this point... I'm not even going to put a link to this page: At least not initially.
I'm going to treat it a journal. And mostly because it is a journal. I have a terrible memory and if I don't make notes I'm pretty likely to make the same mistakes again, not this season, or even the next... but as the years go by, I'll try again if I don't have some memory trigger.
So, if someone can benefit from my notes, that'll be great.
The reasoning... why we got goats - and therefore, electric net fencing.
We were broke, but had a lot of land. And that land was very quickly getting highly overgrown. We hadn't mowed anything for years due to money, equipment failures and sever lack of time. Turns out working 100+ hours per week is not very conducive to yard work.
So the first task was to pick a brand of fencing. Premier does the best (by far, in my opinion) at marketing and explaining their product and initially they seemed like a solid, logical choice... In fact, they seemed like the only choice until I did a little digging.
Upon further research I came across Kencove, Fast Fence (they are apparently also called Maxflex and Electric Nets), Zareba and Electro-Web from FarmTek.
Truthfully, I ended up with Kencove fencing mostly because it's American (PA actually!) made and I just didn't have the time to keep comparing.
We ended up with this version of the Kencove fence thinking we would be able to use it for our goats and eventually for our free-range chickens as well. It's 48" high and has 3.5" spacing at the bottom and a total of 14 horizontal lines. I would like to try another brand at some point, but we are satisfied with the quality and, although there is (much) more of a learning curve than I would have thought, love the fence!
Well first I must say that I knew enough about geometry that I had decided that I was going to get as much square footage out of the fence as possible. Here's how I decide I would attempt to put up the fence whenever possible: as a circle, or as near a circle as possible.
Although counter-intuitive to most people, a circle has more usable square footage than a square. (I know the diagram above is not perfect, but for this purpose it seems good enough)
So it would make sense to try to only have fence enclosures that were as round as possible... right? Well, no. It might make perfect sense from the perspective of getting the most pasture for your fencing dollar, but what I failed to realize is that the fence is by far the most sturdy when the fence is run in a straight line. Although I always thought that utility lines were run in straight lines for less material costs, now I suspect that there is much more to it than that!
And in case it's not obvious to everytong ';a square yields more square footage than a rectangle.
And as shown above, the longer a rectangle, the less usable square footage.
Also, I found out pretty quickly that it is much easier to try to guess where to clear vegetation to lay the fence in a straight line, than it is in a circular fashion.
But really, it came down to fence support... which I'll go into later.
OK - If anyone is actually reading this... below this point are just notes for future ramblings.
I have trouble with guessing length.
Clearing brush for fence.
against each other.
Crossing over.
Animals and housing in and out.
Against water.
Above water.
I have trouble with getting the fence "rolled" up so that when laying it out the stakes are facing the right direction.
I will say as good as electric net fencing appears to be, I have several idea to improve upon it that I think may be actually patentable. I'm debating about documenting any of the ideas here for obvious reasons.
Net Fencing
The promise of electric net fencing is quite alluring: Low (comparatively) cost, flexibility, fresh pasture, predator control and more...
Will the promise hold true?
Read to find out....
Background:
I am about the most frugal person you will ever meet! Everything I do is with the goal of saving the most... making the most of something's potential, etc... Real all this with that in mind.
If you're frugal like me, you may understand. If not, feel free to have some fun laughing at my attempts at frugality that sometimes results in errors.