Keeping the bigger critters out!

Once you have taken all the effort to plant, and then manage or nurture the new trees they need to be protected from our larger four footed friends such as horses, cattle, llamas and sheep etc. Fencing is the next important thing to do - although I may have got this out of order a bit because I actually had the fences up before I planted.



Anyway because we have many horses on our place and the odd sheep from time to time, we needed a fence that would be effective long term. So I chose a 5 wire fence. Now one thing that is an important consideration, especially if you have horses, is the type of wire to use. High tensile 6 mm (13 gauge) has very nasty effects on horses legs if they should run into a fence - it is quite effective at skinning legs as it won't break and is small enough gauge to catch the skin etc. So the whole of our place was fenced with low tensile 12 mm (8 gauge) wire. To increase the effectiveness of the fence we electrified the top, 3rd and bottom (5th) wire so that the even numbered wires acted as an earth of sorts. I am not sure of the size of our electric fence unit but with minimum interfence from trees etc., produces about 5000 volts. This seems effective for the larger animals and not bad on humans either. But you can get the right unit with advice from your local stock and station agency.

Now when I put in the fences money was pretty tight so most of the development was done by Sally and myself. We got most of the strainers thumped in mechanically and I did the rest. I looked around for options to string the wires and in terms of cost, simplicity of placement, and being "horse kind" I used Insultimber posts and battens. These were made of hard wood. The posts were 50 cm x 50cm and the battens 50x25.

I went to the local engineering firm and got them to make me a steel pilot 50 mm in diameter, about 90cm long with a sharpened tip that was case hardened. I used this to make pilot holes so that I could thump the insultimber posts into the ground which was easier for the posts and me! The fences were all put about 1.2 meters from the tree line and I set the posts at 10 meters with battens every meter. I know that insultimber is still available, but I am not sure if it is still as cost effective.

The fences have worked very well. They have been up for 27 years and the unit still puts out 4500-5000 volts.

The beauty of these fences is that if a horse bolts into the fence the wires snap and the posts break and the damage to the horse is minimised. OK when this happened it did get my blood pressure up and I did tend to mutter a few unkind words in the drection of the horse but then I was reminded about the savings in vet bills (bbbbrrrrr) I calmed down.

One little tip about electric fences. You can get the fanciest most powerful electric fence unit but if your earth is no good then the unit won't be much good either. I was fortunate in that we have a water race running through our property so with some difficulty I banged in four, 2 meter galvanised earthing rods, two on either side of the water race and about 2 meters apart. Then I bought some stainless steel wire and ran it from our garage where the unit is, out to the earth rods, a distance of about 75 meters. I did this via the garden fence which was basically a netting fence supported by Waratahs (Y posts now). So the earth wire weaved along the base of the fence out to the rods. This assisted the earthing because the garden was frequently watered and the wire mesh and the Waratahs were in moist ground. I was also careful how I attached the stainless wire to the earthing rods to ensure a very good connection.

So for your earthing system try and find an area that stays moist longer, some where on the dark side of a building (the southern side in New Zealand).

There is one other little tip learnt from experience that will keep your blood pressure in check and stop horses leaning over and eating trees. When you get a new horse on the place or a visitor, put it out in the paddock with its cover off initially. Horse covers are reasonable insulators and the horse may not get a good lesson about electricity first off. In our experience this is vital, because once given a good belt by the fence they become very obliging about not eating trees.