fencing advice appreciated!

[Chuck52]

I've got lots of deer, lots of fruit trees, and a garden. No way am I going to put up an 8 foot fence. I keep the deer out of my garden with a fence of cattle panels which are what.....54 inches high? I wire some pvc extensions to every other t-post and run nylon cord at about a foot over the panels and then up as far as I can reach. I then flag that with whatever....use plastic bags or pieces of flagging tape. It's kept the deer out for four years. The cattle panels are barely held up with t-posts minimally set in the ground so I can take the fence down easily and get my tractor in there for tilling. I plan to go to all raised beds next year. The beds will be made with concrete blocks and I'll put up a permanent fence of 5 foot welded wire. With the raised beds near the fence line, I'll probably have some posts or something stuck in the holes in the blocks to discourage the deer from jumping the short fence.

The idea is that what a deer can jump and what it will jump aren't the same. Deer could easily jump through my high "barrier", but they don't, and haven't even during really dry spells when my garden was the only lush green stuff around. I expect I'll have similar experience with my permanent fence and more visual barriers. If I had to put up an expensive 8 foot fence I guess I'd just find another hobby.

Chuck

 

[thingy]

An 8 ft fence won't cost all that much more than a 5 ft one,perminate type I mean,,but it depends,,my garden had a 4-5 ft fence around it,,raised it to 6-7 ft by just adding 2x6 extensions to fence posts,,fence was already there.
But if I was building a perminate fence,,would go 8 ft [thats if I wanted to keep deer out].
You could go electric,maybe two rows of electric fencing,[or one electric in front of 4-5 ft regular fence],one out about deer belly high,,deer don't get a running jump as far as I've seen when jumping a fence,,[unless something is after them],they walk up to fence and spring over,,that outside belly tall electric fence out about 4 ft from other fence will stop them from walking up to other fence,,,,thingy

 

[Chuck52]

I've thought about the electric fence thing, too. That would be another easy way to get by with a regular height fence by just making them have to jump both far and high. I might add an electric wire to the top of my permanent fence when I build it, but it will be to discourage coons and other climbers rather than the deer. I'm pretty confident the deer won't want to jump my fence and land on whatever I have inside the line, but the darn coons and squirrels might see my garden as a convenient cafeteria. I figure to use 24" chicken wire along the bottom of the fence to keep all but the baby rabbits out.

The original poster was talking about fencing an orchard, I think. My fruit and nut trees aren't all in the same area, so I fence individual trees with 5 foot circles of the 5 foot welded wire. I figure when the trees get big enough to outgrow the circles, they are going to be big enough to withstand a bit of deer browsing. That should work for semi-dwarf apple trees, but it may not apply to the smaller peach trees and fully dwarfed apples. None of the orchards around here are fenced against deer....I don't know what they do about deer damage. There's a peach orchard just across the river from me and I know they must have deer running through there, but no fence. Haven't even seen a dog. Gotta ask them about that, but it will be next year before I go there since they lost their entire crop to the frost this year!

Chuck