FENCE IN, FENCE OUT

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WOVEN WIRE FENCING

I hope some day that Bill and I can build a rail fence across the top of the hill here at Glencairn. We have enough scrub trees to do it. In the meantime, though, there's a perimeter fence line around our 34 acres that's horse high (if not hog tight).

The woven wire that encloses Glencairn is heavy duty Red Brand, made by Keystone Steel of Peoria, Illinois. Because we intend to, put sheep on the place after our horses, I chose 1047-611 fencing: that is, 10 horizontal bars, 47 inches high, with vertical stays 6 inches apart and No. 11 wire in the strands and stays. The bottom and top strands are heavier 10 gauge.

A less expensive livestock enclosure uses 12-inch stay spacing. Sears advertises the alternative as sheep and cattle fencing with "extra wide spacing between line and stay wires to keep sheep from getting their heads caught". Don't believe it! The Madison Avenuese translates as, "if you have sheep, they will stick their heads through this wider mesh. We think it's wide enough that they won't slay stuck." The problem with woollies, though, is that they're just smart enough to get, into trouble and dumb enough to forget how to get out. We've had 'em hung up in wide-spaced wire time and again. Although Glencairn's perimeter is fenced with 47-inch-high, heavy duty wire, I did use some lighter and lower 939-12-11 (9 bar, 39 inches high, with vertical stays 12 inches apart, and No. 11 wire throughout except for heavier 10 gauge in the top and bottom strands) fencing around a one acre pasture for our Shetland mare and her foal. This "economy" fence kept tire ponies in, all right, but it didn't keep our neighbor's heifers out. When the half-grown cattle got to high tailing around his pasture in fly season, 39 inches didn't pose much of an obstacle to them at all.

Why heifers have to climb out over the same barrier they jumped coming in is one of country life's little mysteries but that's what they do. They'll bunch up against the fence and push it over until one of them panics and starts to clamber. Such action can bend steel posts, pop staples, and snap even the heavy No. 10 wire along the woven fence's top.

All of which goes to show that the whole height versus cost business is a tricky question. "The man I'm building fence for now," Bill says; "bought 39-inch wire to save money. We're raising it six inches off the ground and running the top barbed wire a couple inches higher than usual. I told him his cows'll get their heads through and be cut up bad but with prices the way they are, he says he can't afford 47-inch. I'd string two strands of barb if I was him, but that near puts the cost up to what he's trying to save."

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