People who own cows...

[Seashells]

Learned my brother purchased horse panels for his cows in Oregon. However I believe cows need stronger panels....Which brand panels do you recommend? Where could he purchase them? Your help appreciated

Thanks!

 

[chandab]

As long as they are heavy duty, any brand should work, but "heavy duty" is the key; and extra rails help, so the cows can't put their heads between the rails (they are known to just "walk off" with a corral, if they can get their heads between the rails). [Medium-duty can work, as long as the extra rails are there.] I know a lot of cattle people use Powder River (the traditional, heavy green ones), but they are very expensive. We have some rather old, 12' blue panels, and they work great with our cattle, but I haven't any idea what brand they are. Hutchinson West has some good cattle panels. [Most of our panels are either my horse panels (horse use only), or some my husband has had forever and a few bought at the local steel place.]

My light duty panels, barely work for the horses; my husband's 16H saddle gelding stood on a bottom rail and bent it down to the ground (they work fine for the minis).

 

[Seashells]

Thank you, I forwarded the info to him.

 

[shorthorsemom]

Hi, we have dairy cows. Our girls will push down our woven wire fencing if we don't use hot wire to keep them off the panels. What we do is put a decently hot strand of electric wire inside the woven wire. You can nail wooden extensions to your posts or something similar and put on an insulator on the end and run the wire around your fence that way. Don't make it too close to your woven wire or you will electrocute birds.

We use a good strong fencer. We can always tell when our hot wire isn't working, the cows just put their heads down and push right through. The combo of both types of fencing (woven and hot) works well for us. best wishes.

 

[jleonard]

I don't have any experience with cows, but there is a person down the road from us who has a field they rotate their cows into for a few weeks a year. The field borders a decently busy road and all that they have to contain the cows is ONE strand of electrical wire.

Makes me so nervous when I drive by every day, I don't know why those cows stay in!

 

[shorthorsemom]

I have seen people (especially our local amish friends) that do rotational grazing use only one strand of wire to contain the cows. Makes me very nervous,. I guess since they have grazing to keep them content they aren't worrying about them testing the fence to get to the "greener pastures". Not something we ever felt comfortable doing but lots of local farmers do it.

 

[Minimor]

Most people hear use the plain welded metal panels--1" square tubing--for their cattle pens. Those are the most economical--they're not fancy, any welder can make them up, but they are sturdy. Some who want to spend more money buy the brand name varieties--Hi-Qual is the best known one around here, can't think what the others are--I see those at the farm supply places & I guess some must buy them, but I can't recall being on any farms that actually have them.

Some of the guys have heavy plank fences on their corrals but in most cases when those need replacing they switch to the 1" welded steel panels.

Pasture fences here still tend to be barbed wire, several strands. It is very common to have the cattle pastured in fences that are single strand hot wire--they run a pretty good current through those fences and most of the cattle respect it. Once in awhile there's a fence crawler in the group; one year the neighbor had his cattle pastured just down the road from us, and every couple days (if not every day) he was out here rounding up 8 or 10 cattle in the grain field behind us--he'd bought that one group of cows together only to discover that they were all fence crawlers. (That particular pasture is fenced with several strands of barbed wire, it wasn't the single strand electric they were getting out of) After a couple of weeks those cattle disappeared--not sure if he found a way to keep them in, or if he moved them elsewhere or if he resold them! Ordinarily his cattle are very good about the fences.

 

[minifancier]

I raise a steer every two years and I use the same fencing I do with my miniature horses. The wire is real cheap woven fence 48 inches high, and the other pen is 48 inch high light duty chain link.

In fact for 2 years I had a exotic steer, a 45 inch tall miniature Zebu.

Now I must say most all sides do have electric wire, but I don't leave it on much. And I have been doing this for over 14 years. Now this is just at the most 2 steers at a time but not once have they bothered my fences, even though it would be easy for them to go right through it if they wanted to.

My minis have been in one pen the steers or steers have been in the other pen

Many many farmers just use One Electric wire to separate cattle from one field to the next. Unless you are raising some rough stock or bulls, i see no reason at all to get heavy duty anything.

I mean I helped my vet for years milking his cows ( 60 head of milk cows ) and he just moved One fairly small electric wire ( The Tape Kind ), around the different pastures to keep the cows out. Especially to move them around in one pen to "Graze" through the day.

 

[HGFarm]

I am not sure how much land your brother has..... we have always used tight barbed wire fence with stays in it for cattle, but we were fencing sections, not a couple of acres. Cattle can move, bend and tear up panels (they are pretty hard on fencing) unless they are the really heavy duty kind that was mentioned. Cattle are notorious for rubbing on, leaning on, trying to get through, etc... fencing. Woven wire is traditionally sheep fencing and not made for big cattle.

I have seen smaller pastures also that had a strand of electric wire for fencing and it still amazes me that that keeps them in... I dont know how well that works on a long term basis, but unless someone wanted to do roundup every other day, it must work ok. Basicly for cattle, the heavier duty, the better.

 

[chandab]

I am not sure how much land your brother has..... we have always used tight barbed wire fence with stays in it for cattle, but we were fencing sections, not a couple of acres. Cattle can move, bend and tear up panels (they are pretty hard on fencing) unless they are the really heavy duty kind that was mentioned. Cattle are notorious for rubbing on, leaning on, trying to get through, etc... fencing. Woven wire is traditionally sheep fencing and not made for big cattle.

I have seen smaller pastures also that had a strand of electric wire for fencing and it still amazes me that that keeps them in... I dont know how well that works on a long term basis, but unless someone wanted to do roundup every other day, it must work ok. Basicly for cattle, the heavier duty, the better.

Laurie, you said it all better than I could. Initial post asked about panels, so that's what I responded to. Our cattle pastures are 3-5 wires of barbed-wire for the cattle with posts set 12' apart at the most (except for some really old fencelines that have larger spacing, they are being updated as needed). If they have lots to eat and large space, they usually don't bother the fences, but in more confined areas, the fencing needs to be very sturdy.

 

[Coventry Lane Farm]

We use two strands of electric fence with T posts and our farm was there since 1769 and so happened in 2000 the farmer that lived beside us sold out and a developer bought the 500 acres and turned it into a golf community and a links course smack up against us so fencing is very critical for us for Texas Longhorn cattle we raise. The fencer is a very strong one, the best that we could buy and it sure lets you know that its working by all means.

Also, Cattle and hogs can "smell and sense" electric thru the wire, they will put their nose close and they can tell if the fencer is not working, they are pretty smart critters. For our horses pasture we use woven wire with separate pastures beside the cattle pastures.

Our biggest problem is the deer tearing down the fence at our place and coyotes that now have appeared recently. We have people that hunt on our property but they had to be careful with all the housing and animals as well being there.