Stock fence with top rail.

[Ajmoore1]

Hi

 

I am quoting for a a stock fencing job. It is on a mixed farm of beef and sheep. The majority of the fencing is following a hedgerow and i have suggested 3m spacing between intermediate posts and ht 8/80/22 and 2 strands of barb wire. They are happy with this.

 

There is one length, 158m that divides two fields with no hedge row so i suggested putting the posts bit closer at 2.5m spacing's which they are happy with. They have asked if i can put a rail on the top to make it more visible to the cattle. I explained if I use a rail i will either have to alter the spacing to suit

 

. I will be using 3 1/2 inch round posts so would i be better to use 3 1/2 x 1 1/2 inch 12ft rails putting the spacings at 6ft or 4 x 2inch  16 ft rails at 8 ft spacing's?

 

How secure will we get the rails on 3 1/2 inch posts or is it worth upgrading them to 4inch rounds?

 

Any advice appreciated

 

Cheers

 

Jon

[MikeW]

I would use a 4-5" posts @ 6' spacings, this makes the job quite expensive though.

[RCCM]

I've nailed 38x87 rails on 75/100mm inters quite successfully and strongly but you need to be pretty precise with your post spacing and driving.

[RCCM]

And we did it at 1.8m intervals which as Mikew said it would get expensive over 158m however it gives a stronger fence especially if you are using 75mm posts.

[premnayloon]

What I do is if doing 3.6mtr rails,

I measure out a post at either 1.7 or 1.75 mtrs and mark them then chap this mneans your Rail will always fit as the distance is always less than 3.6 it just means a- you always have a wee bit to cut of every rail,

if you have the odd rail is shorter as I have on more occasions than I have expected it us usable

c) it allows you a slight adjustment if post position if need be,

If you look on my gallery all my post and rail jobs I do this think it comes out fine.

[tentman]

Hmmm - if your UK cattle are anything like ours in NZ the cap rail will last 5 minutes, I reckon cattle think a rail is like a sparred fence for a hunt that they have to jump - and when they do they seem to always take the rail out.  And thats if you're lucky, they'd rub it to bits in another 5 minutes.

 

Funny how things vary regionally, here we never do sight lines for cattle but frequently for horses (and they chew rails to bits).

[S J H]

If you have to do it, I'd use a 4.8m 4x2 so you have less posts,

[Charliehub]

Have you considered using electric fencing, one of my regular costomers breeds Limousin cattle and winter grazes sheep he needed to divide up a field so we used ht lamb safe netting two strands of barb with 1.8m 75/100 posts at 3m intervals but also ran a 2.5mm ht electric along the top on both sides on off set insulators, worked a treat I recon we did it about 5 years ago and I was quoting there this weekend and it's still doing it job well which surprised me considering how feisty his cattle are...!

[West Fork Fence]

I saw some Horse Rail from Centaur in the Tornado warehouse.  They also make a product called Hot Rail if you wanted to electrify the top.  Both products are a little spendy, but would make a  durable and attractive solution to your problem.  12' is the farthest I've ever spaced my intermediates with the Horse Rail product, and 5 years later it still looks new.

[Green Man]

If I have two use a top rail i always use 2x4 4.8m long then your spacing would be 2.4 nearly 2.5 as you wanted.