When my husband and I sit down at the table, oftentimes we are discussing the current projects happening at the farm, our wishlists for future projects, and fencing.
When you picture a farm, what comes to mind? The iconic red barn perhaps, the myriad of animals, a tractor and a haystack or two. And yes, these are all things that one can have on a farm, but truly, as we have come to discover on our little homestead... is that none of this works without fencing.
It is so mundane, so... boring perhaps. But without it, your chickens are in your garden, your cows are on your doorstep, your pigs are on your porch, and there is poop everywhere. Fencing is what keeps the chaos at bay and helps everything function smoothly.
Here at Silver Goose Family Farm, or how I like to call it sometimes, "Whatever Works Land," I was recently reminded of what a shoddy job our fencing currently is. It was a normal Wednesday. My two oldest girls were at the table doing our morning homeschooling. They get distracted, try and do each others assignments. They bicker over markers and where their erasers went. My toddler was finishing up everyone's leftover breakfast (she is my dependable meal finisher) and leaving sticky fingerprints of yogurt all over the table and eventually onto chairs. I was moving between the two oldest, and the sink trying to tackle the mountain of dishes and a fussy, teething baby on my shoulder. My coffee was sitting on the counter, cold now, and untouched from when I poured it. And in between squawks from the baby and the raised voices of my big girls, my 2 year old looked out the window and just ever so quietly said, "Momma, Cookie is out."
I looked out the window, confused, because I was not sure what she is talking about until I saw the brown and white speckled side of our lovely cow prancing past the house, followed closely behind my husband. He opened the door and sticks his head in, "Could you....?"
"Yup. Coming."
And the girls dropped their books and pressed their noses against the window. "Watch your sisters," I said, waiting just for a second to hear the "Yes, Momma!" from my oldest before tugging on boots and jogging after my husband.
Cookie had made her way into our garden, nibbling on a stray leaf of kale and a snack of sweet potato vines, but most of the vegetables have been pulled for the winter, so she quickly skipped off when she saw us coming. She toured the yard, and galloped around swinging her horns, genuinely happy to stretch her legs and moving at a surprisingly swift pace for an animal of her size. Have you ever seen a cow jump? It's a happy sight to see an animal really pleased with themselves, but it's terrifying up close and not safe for children or our dogs, and then what if she got out into the road? Havoc would be wreaked.
We got her safely back in her pen (not enough can be said about the effectiveness of the "kashuk-kashuk" that a rubber bowl full of grain makes), and I spent a time looking at the temporary pen (which had long since reached the end of its usefulness). She had managed to nuzzle down the wire roll off of the T-bar post, and then it was just a matter of getting front legs over and a quick hurdle, and she was home free. This was not the first time she has done this. Nor the last, as long as we continued to use this set-up.
Normally, here would be how sane people set up their farm and animal fencing:
1) Think about what animal they would like to have.
2) Buy/install/build appropriate fencing for animal.
3) Get animals.
4) Be happy farmers.
Here's how we do it:
1) Think about what animals we would like to have.
-----> Unexpected adoption of animal that may or may not be what we were thinking of getting because someone was giving them away for free or they're desperate to get rid of them or it was a fantastic price, cannot miss opportunity so my industrious husband orders 20 of whatever instead of ... let's say, one or two.
2) Scramble to throw together temporary fencing/pen with the random assortment of material we have at the house. (I scored a bunch of old metal bunk bed frames and pallets and old garden gates that have been lifesavers in our sudden acquisition of animal.)
----> The "Ka-thunk, ka-thunk" of the T-post driver putting in new bars to move temporary pens around so animals get fresh land to play around on is an oh-so-common sound on our property.
3) Plan and plan and plan on possible sites for permanent animal housing. Slowly start building
4) Be happy, albeit a little crazy, farmers.
I guess the end points are the same no matter what path you take, but I definitely think the first method is the more sane approach.
Here are things I learned about fencing as a city girl. Most people probably understand this, but I thought I'd share it anyway:
Wooden slat fencing, picket fencing, rail fencing, or any fencing made with wood is beautiful. Aesthetic. And expensive. We have over 30 acres on our property. Even just fencing in the back half for our animals and gardens was over a mile of work that would've blown our budget for years! We had to think of a better alternative.
One must pick the appropriate fencing and hardware for your animals.
Starting with the smaller animals, like chickens, ducks, and geese, simple mesh fencing is pretty straightforward and effective. Chicken wire can be thrown up or stapled down to keep birds in a coop or keep them out of garden areas pretty easily. Our chickens free-range, so it's much easier to wire off areas where they can't go rather than create a perimeter for them. Rabbit fencing resembles chicken wire except that it has tighter mesh on the bottom versus the top to keep rabbits and larger rodents on one side. The net roof on chicken runs or other small animal runs is not so that your birds fly away (Chickens can fly short distances, although usually just a high jump up provoked) but to keep predators out. Raccoons, as cute as they are, will go into a coop and just bite the heads off your birds, and then you wake up to wasteful carnage... at least a fox or an opossum will eat the poor things.
Hardware cloth, or gopher cloth is a robust, tight grid of wiring that small rodents cannot go through. This is good for the bottoms of raised beds and around the roots of your trees--because a burrowing mole or gopher can wipe out a whole orchard just from tunneling through your tree root balls.
For cattle and horses, you can use premade cattle panel or hog panel. They come in 16-25 feet sections. They are quite strong, and are great for making smaller corral type structures or in our case, emergency pens. Good for goats that like to butt their heads and hooves and just abuse enclosures for the fun of it, or pigs and cows that just lean on walls and scratch themselves on whatever works (But when you weigh 300 or 800 lbs. respectively, you need something strong that will take even the gentlest of scratchers).
Horse fencing and other jumper type animals also have "no-step" variety fencing where the vertical grid lines are close enough together to prohibit them from getting a hoof stuck in between the wires, or using it as a catapult to jump over like our dogs currently do. (Naughty puppies.) Some of these varieties have smaller grids towards the bottom of the fence and get bigger towards the top, perhaps if you have different sized animals in the same enclosure.
The plus side to this fencing is that they work. They're strong. They're heavy duty. The downside is that it is expensive. They're about $25 a panel give or take, and you need quite a few to make even the humblest enclosures for let's say, the escape artist cow.
Less robust, but still useful are roll fencing, the same grid structure that comes rolled up and requires attachment to posts. They're strong but not as rigid...and a troublesome tall animal can wiggle them off the posts, as evidenced by above anecdote.
Having experimented with the other kinds, we've moved on to electric fencing and barbed wire fencing. This is the most economical fencing method. It's not the prettiest, but it's effective. We have a couple varieties. Electric net fencing is just that, nylon fencing threaded with conductive material on flexible plastic posts that have prongs you step into the ground. It's incredibly light-weight and great if you change your fence line regularly.
Then there is the traditional wired fence. Three - five strands of wire are strung and attached to a charger with a defined voltage running through it at snout height of whatever animal you are keeping enclosed. A lot of animal electric fencing is pulsed, so that if you touch it, you get a quick shock versus the cartoon-style lock down your muscles fry method. Still an uncomfortable zap. You can use a high-tensile wire that can withstand hundreds of pounds of pressure so on the off chance you had something charge the line, it wouldn't immediately break through. And so once you decide on where your fencing will be, you have to train the animal to the line (and your children, too).
To set up for the pigs, we let them roam around enclosure with a hot perimeter. It has been advise that while training, use the highest zap possible to really teach the animal by the single touch... don't cross that line. Pigs are quite smart, and it only takes a few hits before they know to keep away. You can even turn the wire off if your animals are docile enough with it... we've had a curious hog that touched their snout to a line just to be sure every couple of days, but the majority of them keep their distance. It's fast to put together, fast to take down, and eas(ier) on the wallet
So for our next round of fencing, we've decided to go the electrical route. In retrospect, it was actually a good thing that all of our fencing was so temporary, because we were able to see where our animals did the best, what was close to water, what kind of weather/shade/sun tolerances they had, whether we liked their smell so close to us, what pests they attracted, etc. Now we have a better idea of what everything will look like, our next step is something, a bit more permanent.
Let's build a fence! or several. It's not the most exciting part of farming, but it leads to great things.
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