Have you looked at the
cost of woven wire fencing? The price
has sky rocketed. Not to mention that
most of it is made in China or some other job-stealing country. The idea of getting foreign countries to
depend on ‘U.S.’ for buying their products has worked too well (i.e. loss of
jobs, depression of gross national product, debt, etc). The only real big ticket items we export are
military products (we give food away).
For fixing or improving farm
fencing, there is a low cost (other than some elbow grease), green recycling, functionally
better, answer. Cargo pallets!
Pallets are usually
imported forest hardwoods that are very durable and strong. I get them for free, but you can find them
for sale for $2 to $5 per pallet.
I put two 2x6 treated and
coated, one-foot pieces on the bottom of the pallet (to keep the pallet off the
ground). I then stand the pallet up,
with the slats vertical, and wire it to the existing fence.
You can buy horse, sheep,
goat, etc., no-climb fence, but it's very expensive and hard to install. The pallets are easy to install and you can
do it over time. The slats, being
vertical, make it much harder for the animals to climb to eat bushes, trees,
crops or whatever.
One of the problems with
animals climbing regular fence is that they break the horizontal stays and open
holes in the fence. Especially nowadays,
the galvanization process is not as good or long-lasting as older ‘toxic’ fence
material. If you really want to get anal,
you can paint the pallets, but that is a waste of time and money (in short
supply for most of us independent farmers!).
If you want to make a
stand-alone pallet fence, it is a little more difficult than patching/redoing a
fence with lots of holes in it. You will
need fence posts in the ground and more wire or wood between pallets and screw
those together – more money, time etc. But
it will be worth it in the long run! Have
fun.
