The Basics on High Tensile Fence

High tensile fence has been successfully used with almost any ruminant livestock species. It is commonly used with cattle, sheep, horses, and pigs.

Check out our sheep fencing page to learn about the use of this type of fencing with sheep.

Basic Features

• Smooth strand (no barbs) galvanized wire able to handle significant pull or tension

• Comes in rolls of 3/4 of a mile of wire

• Can be used non electrified or hooked to a power source providing pulsing electric current along the wires

• Long lasting wire but is can be difficult to re-roll for re-use elsewhere

• Breaks in the fence can be repaired by splicing in new wire pieces

Many ranchers design their own reels that mount on the back of a truck or all terrain vehicle for unrolling and rolling up the wire. Multiple wire rolls can be unrolled at one time when building multi-strand fences.

An electrified high tensile fence requires accessory supplies such as insulators, wire tensioners, the charger, power source and ground rods. This requires some basic knowledge of electrical current to run an effective electric fence.

Wire is strung out along fence-line and is attached to posts with insulators that will not ground out the electric current. Underground cables are used at gateways or wires are brought across the gateway and hook to the other side with spring gate handles.

Once the fence is built some maintenance is required to keep grass and brush along the fence line manageable. Excessive growth will draw power out of your fence thus defeating its purpose.

One downfall is that the fence line can lose current for various reasons. Finding where along the fence the trouble is can be a hassle. For troubleshooting hand held devices can be purchased to locate trouble or dead spots in the fence line. This saves many hours wandering up and down the fence-line trying to find the source of the problem.

A fence that is electrified will pulsate with current. Animals who contact the fence only briefly and at the right moment may not receive a shock at all. Any animal who persists or pushes on the fence at the wrong moment will receive a jolt of current enough to startle them and make them think twice about investigating the fence a second time.

The number of wires used and the wire spacing will vary depending on what type of livestock you are fencing in. As high tensile fence is almost always used as electric fencing the manuals that come with the electric charger describe the best spacing of wires for the various animals species.

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