This past weekend I completed a project that added an additional 30 acres to the land occupied by our bison. The majority of the work involved in this project has been installing 4000 feet of new fencing through a mostly forested property perimeter. Of the total fencing about 1,200 feet is 6.5 feet tall woven wire fencing and the remaining is 6 strands of high-tensile electric fence. The woven wire portion of the fence is the same type discussed in a previous post, while the electric fence is similar to previously installed electric fences except more permanent and taller.
Using the tractor mount wire dispenser saved a lot of time by allowing me to install all six of the electric fence wires at one time.
One useful new tool I used was the tractor mounted wire dispenser I've described building in a previous post. The wire dispenser worked pretty well as long as I made sure the tensioning nuts on each wheel were set high enough to prevent excessive unwinding.
The following images document the new fencing.
This graphic indicates the locations of reference points that will be mentioned in conjunction with the following photographs. The thick solid white line represents the property boundary. On the north edge (north is up in this graphic) of the property boundary all the fencing is woven-wire. A road runs along this boundary and we decided woven-wire would work best for any road-facing bison pasture. The blue dashed line on the western edge of the property represents the newly installed electric fence. Finally, the dotted line running down the center of the property is the semi-permanent electric fence. Part of this has now been removed.
The location of the new gate just prior to installation. Each wire on one side of the gateway is electrically connected to its corresponding wire on the other side of the gateway via an insulated buried cable. Five of the six wires are hot (i.e. conduct electric pulses), while the third wire from the top is grounded. During very dry weather the ground under foot become less able to effectively ground something that touches a hot fence wire, which would reduce it's effectiveness as a deterrent. The presence of a grounded wire next to the hot wires resolves that issue.
Looking east from the new gateway.
Looking west towards the rest of the newly installed electric fence.
As the new electric fence nears the western boundary it turns north.
The other side of a small hill still heading north.
A slight turn west.
Another turn further west.
Here the fence reaches the westernmost edge of the property and turns north again.
This portion runs straight north for a little over 1,000 feet.
More of the fence running to the north.
Finally, the electric fence reaches the northernmost part of the property. Here it runs into the woven-wire fence that stretches eastward and parallel to a dirt road.
The new woven-wire fence continuing east.
More of the same.
At last the new woven-wire fence meets up with the older woven-wire fence. This is where the old semi-permanent electric fence was connected to the woven wire fence. The gate and electric fence shown here have since been removed.
An additional photograph of the semi-permanent fence just prior to removal.
With the removal of the semi-permanent electric fence, the surveillance station was no longer outside the bison pasture so a small electric fence had to be installed around it.
Once the new fencing was ready, I completed the final steps of bridging the old and new fences, moving the gates, and removing the fence that was no longer in use. This was undertaken at night to reduce the risk of bison curiosity causing problems. In the past, this method has worked well for me when I needed to work on the fence in a way that could cause the bison to temporarily doubt the effectiveness of the fence.
However, while the night working method has been effective in the past, it did not work very well last weekend. Apparently their eyesight is much better than I had thought and something as bright as a nearly full moon was enough for them to figure out what had happened to the fence before I had finished removing the out-of-use fence. Fortunately I had already gotten the new fence bridged to the old fence, the new gate installed, and the electricity turned back on, but it sure was a shock how quickly they caught on. I had just gotten started rewinding the out-of-use fence wire when I noticed them bounding through the forest in the newly opened area.
Since the new area has become available they've spent most of their time exploring. In anticipation of their exploration, I setup a trailcam, which captured some interesting videos.
