CountyLine 3pt Fence Stretcher

[bglz42]

I have that model. Love it! A lot of my fencing is done alone, so it's a lifesaver. Seems to stretch pretty good for me, but I don't do extra-long runs. Mostly 250' or so.

[MIKE7639]

We just used the CountyLine 3pt Fence Unroller/Stretcher today to put up a few rolls of goat fence on a gently rolling, well mowed pasture and it worked like a charm. We have some other areas to fence that are wooded and this may not work quite as well there. I had no problem using this implement to stretch the fence with the old Ford 2N although I'll admit it probably could have been done with more precision with a come along. It was a cold, windy, rainy, icy, wet, miserable day for fence work so it was a quick stretch with the tractor and done.

[schweizer]

+1 on just making a sandwich of 2x6's with bolts. I just pulled it tight with the backhoe, chains, and straps. Did several acres for our goats/donkey last spring. Wasn't too hard and was cheap.

[MIKE7639]

Previously I've used the CountyLine 3pt Fence Unroller/Stretcher to unroll lots of 48" goat/sheep fence and it works great but I'd never used it for barbed wire. Today I used it to unroll about 1,000' of barbed wire and it worked very well. As for stretching I've now decided that this is not the tool to use. Using a come along seems easier and more precise to me.

[parapower]

i made my stretcher from a piece of metal bar and welded on some curved hooks, I insert the bar into the fence and then put a log chain on it and connect it to the front tow hook on my loader. I welded chain hooks on the corners of my loader bucket. Works great and is extremely cheap and very reliable.

[zzvyb6]

The woven wire fence I use is 330' to a roll. Once you have the outer end stapled in place at brace posts, just run it along the ground kicking it with your feet until you have it all unrolled. Chain the end to the last post that reaches without any effort. Then I use a ratchet type wire fence stretcher to clamp the top wire on one end and the end hook onto the loader bucket corner. When you back the tractor up, the wire will stand up and fall into line along the posts in play. Staple it in along the top wire to hold it in place. Then move the stretcher to the low wire and do the same procedure. You can do a full roll of wire very quickly (about as fast as you can walk and staple). Then weave the next roll of wire into the previous one by overlapping it a few feet and keep going. No need for any helpers with this method either. You can get the wire very tight this way, but be carefull. You might break the first post if you use too much tension.

[two_bit_score]

The woven wire fence I use is 330' to a roll. Once you have the outer end stapled in place at brace posts, just run it along the ground kicking it with your feet until you have it all unrolled. Chain the end to the last post that reaches without any effort. Then I use a ratchet type wire fence stretcher to clamp the top wire on one end and the end hook onto the loader bucket corner. When you back the tractor up, the wire will stand up and fall into line along the posts in play. Staple it in along the top wire to hold it in place. Then move the stretcher to the low wire and do the same procedure. You can do a full roll of wire very quickly (about as fast as you can walk and staple). Then weave the next roll of wire into the previous one by overlapping it a few feet and keep going. No need for any helpers with this method either. You can get the wire very tight this way, but be carefull. You might break the first post if you use too much tension.

Are you using "H" braces?

[Kapnfriday]

To follow up on this thread . . . I realized that with our fence running through mostly woods that it really didn't make sense for me to get a 3-point unroller/stretcher - we just have too many sections that run through areas I can't get my tractor into. But I have picked up several ideas from this thread that have made the job easier. I'm about half-way through my re-fencing project and so far I'm very happy with the results - it looks so much better than when I originally did this in 2004.

Yesterday I did a run of about 180 feet over uneven, wooded ground. To unroll the fence for this section I did as someone on the first page of this thread suggested and used a piece of pipe and some chains to lift a roll of wire with my FEL. Once the wire was off the ground I could pull off the length I needed and lay it out along my fence line. I couldn't move the tractor around much so even with this set up it wasn't exactly easy, but this made the near impossible do-able. So thanks for that idea.

I've been stretching the fence using a stretcher bar made from two 2x4s bolted together and pulling with two come-alongs. Initially I tried to stretch the full run at once, but the ground was too uneven to make that work. I broke things down into three shorter pulls and it came out great. Nice and tight and not a lot of buckling and folding over the uneven ground.

I have another run coming up of about 200 feet. I think I'm going to try the boom pole-type approach posted earlier. I don't have a boom pole, but if I can get my wire spool to hang vertically from my FEL I think the job will be even easier.

Thanks to all for the feedback and ideas.

[schweizer]

Nice job! Glad it's coming together for you.

Do you have a backhoe? Here's another idea. You can hook up a chain/cable from the side of the hoe bucket to your 2x4 "stretcher bar", and pull your fence line tight with the side-to-side motion of the hoe. (It has a lot less force than the digging motions. Don't attach to FEL or tractor drawbar or you could break the fence and the recoil could hit you.) That's how I did all of my fence and it worked get, and I could even get into areas that were too close (wooded) for the tractor because of the length of the chain. See diagram. Anyway, it's just an idea, and it appears you have it figured out.

Marcus

[Kapnfriday]

Alas, no backhoe. Great idea though. I had a couple short runs of fencing that I could use the tractor FEL to stretch the fence instead of come-alongs - first try I broke the fencing. Lesson learned.