Re: [apple-crop] Best electric fencing materials - DeerDave, thanks so much the feedback. It gives a more complete picture. The university folks on this forum really provide thoughtful responses. You guys don't get near the credit you deserve.
The overall consensus seems to favor an 8' woven wire fence. Per all the advice on this forum, I think I may go with an 8' fence on the new section. However, I'm still going to try electric fence. With the fence that's already there, it's relatively little expense to add height to it and electrify it. I don't think I have quite as much deer pressure as a lot of folks have mentioned here. The adjacent field is leased for deer hunting and hunters blast away during deer season. There is also an orchard 3 miles away which doesn't have any deer fence whatever. For me, the advantage of an electric fence is I think I can keep the costs significantly less than would be expected vs. a full fledged woven wire fence. Because most of the fence would simply require extending the height, most of the cost is extending the T-posts, the charger, and the wire/string. I already have a bunch of wooden posts I bought cheap a couple years ago for the new fence. There isn't a problem with trees overhanging the property. The area I'm fencing is bordered on two sides by county roads and one one side by a neighbor who keeps the fence row fairly clean. The side with the new fence has no trees. Spraying fence rows is something to consider. I figure I'll probably have to spray 3X/season on the new fencing, and once/season on the existing fence, since the weeds have to grow taller than the woven wire (4'+) to reach the electric fence on top of the existing fence. I'm thinking I won't have as much erosion problems you mentioned, due to less overall spraying and flatter ground. All in all, if I had to build all the fence from scratch I'd probably go with an 8' woven wire, but since I've already got two thirds of the fence in place, I'm going to try to go the cheaper route. Bill, Thanks for the idea on the pvc. I will check into it, and I hear you on the zip ties. Based upon all the feedback, I may try to extend the T-posts more than couple feet. If I could extend them 3', that would give me 7 to 7&1/2' height on the existing fence. That said, I'm not sure I could trust zip ties for that much extension. I had planned to go with "clamp tite" wire clamps which may better handle a 3' extension. As an FYI, I've had very good success with the "clamp tite" tool. In my opinion no farmer should be without one. Once you buy the tool, the "clamps" are very inexpensive and last forever. So far, I've used their SS wire (which is more expensive) but I think thin galvanized electric fence wire would work just as well, and would make the clamps essentially free. http://www.clamptitetools.com/ Thanks for all your advice, you've been a big help, helping me think this through. Many thanks to all who have posted their experience with deer fencing. May you all enjoy your family/loved ones this time of year. Mark ----- Original Message ----- From: Dave Rosenberger To: Mark Angermayer Sent: Thursday, December 22, 2011 11:24 PM Subject: Re: [apple-crop] Best electric fencing materials - Deer Hi, Mark -- The advantage of putting in the new section of fence at 8 ft is that you won't have to redo that section when you switch the rest of the fence to 8 ft :). As Mike Fargione indicated earlier, many growers in the Hudson Valley of New York started out with either slanted or vertical electrified deer fences 30 years ago. However, as our white-tail deer pressures increased, virtually everyone has switched to 8-ft woven wire. At our research station, we did this gradually because we could not afford to do it all at once. We put in the first 8-ft woven wire back around 1994 and then gradually replaced additional sections of the old slanted 7-wire electrical fence (originally installed about 1981) as we had the time and budget to do so. We finished the last of it about 3 yr ago. You may think that you can't afford the 8-ft woven wire fence, but my experience with the electrical fence suggests that electrical fences have the following hidden costs: 1. We blew out a $200 charger about once/yr due to lightening strikes, and that was even with a lightening arrestor installed. Sometimes we could send the damaged charger back and get it repaired by the manufacturer for $80 or $100, but other times they were a total loss. Eventually, we kept two units side by side so that when one got blown we could just switch to the other while we got the first one repaired or replaced. Our hill-top location may have made this problem worse for us than for most, but you will find that several miles of wire are pretty good at picking up lightning strikes, and we never succeeded in getting grounding and lightning arrestors that totally protected our chargers. 2. In our area with rain throughout summer, we had to herbicide beneath fences at least twice/yr, and sometimes three times. 3. Keeping down the weeds is essential to keep from grounding out the fence, but it also created erosion problems where the fence ran up/down hill. We had to invest time putting rocks and diverters into gullies beneath the fences that were created by rainstorms. We run our tree rows across hillsides to minimize erosion, but fences sometimes need to go straight up the hill. 4. Shrubs/trees from outside of the fence would grow over our fence, then short it out as branches drooped onto the wires. This can be avoided if you can leave room to mow on the outside of the fence, but we needed all the space we could get, so our fence was pretty close to hedgerows. We had to cut back trees at least every other year. Eventually we figured out how to "chemically prune" brush and tree limbs that grew into the fence from hedgerows by using an annual shot of Krenite. We still do this with the woven wire fence, but woven wire still works if we have occasional branches growing through it. 5. We used thin wood battens to keep electrified wires correctly spaced between the posts that were spaced about 50 or 60 ft apart, and these battens constantly needed adjustment or replacement after they broke. 6. I ended up getting jolted by the fence on numerous occasions, and with 5,000 to 7,000 volts in milisecond bursts, it was not a very pleasant experience. Usually this occurred because I tried some stupid shortcut, like crawling through the live fence to save time, knowing that my rubber boots or sneakers kept me from getting shocked (we had all 7 wires electrified), but then putting my hand down on the ground to catch my balance. Alternating hot and grounded wires would eliminate the temptation to crawl through the fence, but then I would have always had to walk back to a gate. At least with woven wire, I can climb over the fence anyplace there is a post. All in all, I would never want to go back to an electric fence if I expected that I would be farming long enough to recoup the costs of the woven wire. We've had a number of hedgerow trees drop onto our woven wire fence during windstorms, and the high-tensile woven wire available today is pretty good about popping back into place as soon as the fallen tree is removed. The fence never looks quite as straight and aesthetically pleasing after a tree drops on it, but it still serves to keep deer out. Putting in the woven wire is a lot of work and expense, but it's a great way to go if you can afford it at all, even if you have to spread it out over a decade. I have about another 1000' that I need to build fence from scratch. I could use an 8' tall fence for that, but I'm not sure how much good it will do to have part of the fence 6' tall and another part 8'. I'm thinking an electric fence is only as good as it's weakest/lowest point. Mark -- ************************************************************** Dave Rosenberger Professor of Plant Pathology Office: 845-691-7231 Cornell University's Hudson Valley Lab Fax: 845-691-2719 P.O. Box 727, Highland, NY 12528 Cell: 845-594-3060 http://www.nysaes.cornell.edu/pp/faculty/rosenberger/
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