Longer life for Perimeter fence
By Allen Huhn
A strand of electrified high-tensile wire can make your fence last a few more years.
This year we have seen price increases in our industry as fuel, fertilizer and scrap steel prices hit or flirted with record highs. The higher price you see at farm retail outlets is a result of higher supplier prices, and you can be sure that fencing products have been affected like everything else. Earlier this year—just a few months ago—I had estimated fencing a 40-acre paddock with woven wire and a single strand barb wire on top at just a little over $1 per linear foot. That was the first of May. Now let’s jump just 5 months to the first of October. This same fence would now cost approximately $1.20 per linear foot, or about $1,000 for a mile of fence.
In lieu of this increased cost, most of you are faced with the financial decision to replace old, worn-out fencing versus trying to extend its life or replacing it with something different. With the sticker shock of pricing new materials, you may want to take a step back and ask, “What can I do to lengthen the life of my fence?” I believe a very viable and low-cost way to do that is to clear the brush out of fences and add an offset high-tensile electric wire to it. This is an easy and cost-effective way to add several more years to the fence life. By adding a few T-posts to the existing fence (just to straighten it up), I have been able to add 5 to 10 more years to my fence by using offset brackets with high-tensile electric wire. Of course, there are a few costs to install this fence, but measure them against the cost of new woven wire. It’s a little obvious, but if you can keep livestock from pushing over a fence, it’ll last a little longer.
Let’s talk logistics. First, consider the offset brackets. There are several brands on the market, but I believe in quality over price. You can buy a 6-inch offset yellow insulator for every post, but what does this really gain? On a quarter-mile fence, what you gain is the possibility of 120 different shorts if the wire pops out of the insulator or if a deer wraps the hot wire around the existing fence.
Another thing I do not like about the yellow insulators is that they tend to break or bend easily under pressure. Instead, I like to use either of the offset brackets pictured here. The beauty of these insulators is that they keep the wire about 12 inches away from your existing fence. And if you place them every 30 to 40 feet, fixed on your fence about the height between your knee and pockets, it provides good restraint whether your livestock is just grazing (trying to reach through the fence) or if you have bulls trying to get through. These bracket wires will flex under pressure and bounce back if hit. 
Don’t get me wrong on the yellow insulators—I know many of them already have been put on your farms. The main thing that I object to is where these insulators are most often placed—at the very top of the post. Why? I have asked many people this question and the most common answer is to keep bulls or cows from jumping. But if you think about it, a bull operates more along the lines of a bulldozer than a high jumper. When a bull bellows at the neighbor’s bull in contest for cycling cows, what is the most common body language? They have their heads down ready to go through and flatten the fence, not jump it. That’s why I favor hot wire placement between your knee and front pocket. This will keep them off the fence and train them to respect it.
Fencers
There are too many different fencers out there to talk about the pros and cons of each one. The best thing I can tell you is that you’ll get what you pay for. Consider buying a low-impedance unit. Low-impedance models will actually send power “through” a short, so you’ll still have power at the end of the fence. Once you decide on a fencer, consider buying up one power level. That’s a simple way to accommodate future fencing projects. It seems we always tend to add to a fence system’s length and rarely reduce it.
When you install a fence, think about what effective grounding means to arc welding. Without a good ground, your rod just bounces off the metal. You’ll need the same good grounding when you install an electric fencer. If you use galvanized ground wire, use galvanized ground rods and clamps. If you use copper ground wire, use copper ground rods and clamps. Keeping like metals to like grounds will help prevent electrolysis and prevent the failure of your fence.
Finally, to make that old fence last a little longer, you’ll need the right tools to put up the high-tensile buffer. You’ll need a spinning jenny, corner insulators, tighteners, screwdriver. It’s not a complicated list, but the key here is the spinning jenny or a pay-out spinner to uncoil the stiff wire. High-tensile wire is coiled tightly and you can end up with a quarter-mile-long Slinky if you don’t handle it right. There are several spinners on the market. If you’re using an ATV, check out which ones might best adapt to that task. For corner insulators, I think the important thing is quality. Choose porcelain or hard plastics with good U.V. inhibitors. Tighteners are used to tighten up the high-tensile wire.
Correct tightness is easy. Just tighten the fence until there is no visible sag. If you over tighten it to “fiddle” tight, you have decreased the life expectancy of your fence. A big advantage of the interior fence is that it will lengthen the life expectancy of your fence at a minimal cost. Another advantage is that by doing this around the perimeter fences you can always use some kind of polywire or tape to section off the interior for rotational grazing with minimal cost. This would in turn increase your production by increasing the number of grazing days. The main thing to keep in mind when picking out products is that the life expectancy of a 12 ½ gauge high-tensile wire is a minimum 15 to 20 years.
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