I have goats and goats are famous for escaping. I also have horses, so I wanted a fence that was horse safe. And worse of all, there are tons of wild hogs where I live, so keeping them out was a huge priority. I went with 2x4 horse fencing. I started with Red Brand because they had the best price before Covid at Lowes with my military discount. After Covid, they went way up in price, so I bought OK Brand.
I wanted Class 3 galvanized fencing, but couldn't find it, and when I did see it online, it was crazy expensive. Class 1 is expensive enough!!!
I have a 12-inch auger. I'm a Contractor that does a lot of repairs for homeowners. I'm convinced that the only way to keep a wooden post from rotting in the ground is to set it in concrete with the concrete coming up above the ground, so standing water isn't able to touch the wood. I've never pounded posts into the ground, and I don't know if water will sit next to the post after it rains. Backfilling a hole with dirt is the very worse way to set a post and the fastest to rot.
My wood posts are every 100 feet or less. My T-Posts are every ten feet or less. I use a Mansaver T-Post pounder to set my T-Posts. It runs off of a small pancake air compressor that I power from my little Honda Generator.
You want straight lines for fencing. The longer the line the better. Bends and turns require additional bracing, which is more work and more money.
Everything starts at the corners. Anywhere the fence turns, it's a corner. I set those posts first. Then I stretch barbed wire from the base of each post to create my straight line. I measure off for my wood line posts and set them. Then I measure for my T-Posts and install them.
Handling and unrolling the horse fence was my biggest challenge. I built a way to do this using my pallet forks and hay forks. Then I use two come alongs to pull the wire tight.
I'm at the point that it's pretty easy to build the fence by myself. I'm 60 years old and fairly active in decent shape. What takes me the most time and is the most work is clearing the trees. I won't do any fencing if I can't drive and mow along the side of it. Fortunately, when doing my property line, my neighbor felt the same way and allowed me to remove all his trees that I wanted removed.
Trees hate fences. They will attack and destroy a fence if they can. The only way to avoid tree damage is to remove the trees!!!
My fence is goat proof, hog proof and horse safe.
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