How to build a fence

DONE properly, fencing is one of the farm's most valuable assets.
I believe regular fence building and maintenance is an excellent investment in time and money.
I have even discovered a ratio on my farm: each hour of completed fencing saves about three hours of mustering-drafting of strayed stock later on.

Every paddock I subdivide into two doubles my productivity through better grazing management, easier tree establishment and being able to run the farm as one profitable labour unit.

The cost of sheep and cattle-proof fencing built by a contractor is about $7 a metre, with roughly half being labour costs and the other half material costs.

This can be expensive, so the key is to do much of the work yourself and try to obtain fencing materials at minimal costs.
The availability of light pine posts and star picket steel posts, modern plain wire and prefabricated hingejoint or ringlock (a type of mesh fencing) makes the job a pleasure compared to the materials we used years ago.

If you are entirely new to the job, consider enlisting the help of an expert or leaving the whole job to a professional fencer while you make money elsewhere.
But if you are intent to keep your farm profitable and invest the savings in better genetics, pastures or fertilisers, you should consider obtaining materials on the cheap through recycling.

The materials should be gathered over the year and every year - if you store fencing material long enough you will eventually use it.

Annual storms will bring down mature yellow and grey box trees which can be cut into two-metre length strainers and three-metre length stays. This great timber can last up to 60 years as posts. Ignore the fast growing gums such as candlebark or peppermint-messmate as they will rot away before 10 years is out.

Clearing sales, garage sales and other farmers who are renewing their fences often sell steel posts and pine posts at as little as $1 each. I have secured several hundred this way and now have so many I can follow my passion of using the extras as tree stakes to forest my farm in shade and shelter.

Many older farm gates and rolls of hingejoint are thrown out or discarded beside the new fence and are there for the asking. I get enough free fencing material to do a kilometre every year and the cost is only my time.

GETTING STARTED

AN EFFECTIVE fence for sheep, cattle, horses or goats can be made using 150mm diameter pine posts rammed in at 15m intervals with two steel posts in between - all at 120cm heights. Hingejoint of 8/90/30 (eight wires spanning 90cm with 30cm rectangles) is attached with a high-tensile, 2.5 mm plain wire on the top.
High-tensile wires retain their tightness.

For cattle or horses, finish off with an electric wire set on offset brackets and a porcelain insulator. As hungry cattle and horses see fences as a pushover for a morsel of grass on the other side, as well as scratch poles, always electrify a new fence three quarters of the way up if you wish the fence to last more than a year.

Electric fencing for sheep is not the success it is for cattle. If you can't electrify and you still want to run cattle and not horses, two barbs on top, spaced by one plain wire, works well.

Hingejoint or ringlock is a must for sheep or goats as they can't fit through the rectangles. It works well when stock-proofing an existing plain wire fence even if it is not strained tightly. However it can be substituted for six or seven plain wires for cattle.

A fence strain should be no shorter than 100m and no longer than 200m to maintain tightness. Short fences of 20m will always have loose wires, so a top pine rail, placed along the entire length with turnbuckles or ratchet-like permanent end strainers for occasional manual tightening, is a good remedy.

Riverina mesh (110cm high) is excellent in small paddocks and yards as lambs cannot get through nor concuss themselves by ramming it.