Editors’ Note: Awhile back Jim wrote an article on why he prefers managing his cattle with electric fencing. One of his reasons was that it just makes him happy. And maybe he’s happy because he uses good equipment and he’s figured out how to make the best use of it. So here’s some suggestions he has for how you can be a happy fencer too.
There was a conversation on one of the other grazing forums about anchoring temporary fences in the absence of any permanent fences. I thought I would share some of the methods we use here in Idaho.
This is a PowerFlex Power Post Reel Standard. It will accommodate up to three reels on the front brackets, but I have found other ways to use other reels. These are not cheap, but very handy when you need to create an end or corner in the wide open spaces.
The brackets will handle O’Brien, Taragate, the old PowerFlex, Stafix, or Gallagher reels. There are three of these brackets. There is also a loop on the backside of the post that will accommodate a reel running the opposite direction or off to the side.
This is a PowerFlex twin-hook reel that I have hung vertically on the standard. The two hooks fit perfectly around the hammer part of the PowerPost. By the way, note the top part of the post is a smaller size tube than the lower part. The body of the PowerPost is a slide hammer for driving the base spike into the ground.
For smaller jobs, I use Kencove mini-reels. While these will hold about 600 ft of light polywire, I use them with 220 ft of polytape. Ian Gerrish uses them more frequently than I do and he will use them with several hundred ft of polywire.
We use a pigtail post to provide more rigidity to support the reel. You can do this with polywire just as well as the tape I am using here. If you look down the length of the pigtail, you can see there is a slight flex in it. That gives the fence a little bit of springiness to accommodate the deer traffic.
I’ve found that if I try to just hook a gate handle to a polytape, I get poor conductivity. Here is how I anchor the other end of the fence. I use a pigtail once again to add stability. The cross fence has two wraps around the corridor fence to ensure good contact. The other white post to the left of the corridor fence allows me to tension the cross fence.
