2 Cheap Deer Fences for Small Farms (And the Mistake We Made)

Hi guys welcome back to the farm it's a beautiful fall evening and today we're going to be talking about fencing particularly how to manage deer. We've been having a little problem with that right? Yeah we've got something we're dealing with. So we're going to talk about that and show you guys some solutions for managing deer on your farm so let's get into it. The biggest thing you gotta you gotta deal with is deer. You know there's a lot of other little critters and And we'll talk more about that a little later, but... Deer are the ones that can do a lot of damage quickly, and so you've gotta find a way to keep the deer out. And we've had a couple solutions over the years. This is what has been working well for the last, I guess, three or four years. We just have a five-strand electric fence. And people would look and say, you know, this is, these are eight foot T posts, but once you drive them in, you know, this is six and a half feet or something. And, you know, people say, well, they can jump over it or go through it, which is true. But the key to this kind of fencing is to bait the fencing. So you'll see, well, we're not near one here, but we've got we've got these metal caps that we wire onto the fence here this is off now because we've got it on a timer we that it only comes on at night you know it's kind of a twist tie without the protective coating on it with a metal bottle cap and in the metal bottle cap you put a cotton ball and then we put this apple scent on it And people do similar things with peanut butter and aluminum foil kind of thing. But the goal, your whole goal is to get the deer to touch the fence. Okay. And so if they will come and touch it with their nose, you know, you'll never deal with them again. They won't come back. That's very startling, I guess, is an understatement for them. I could see that. Yeah. So, We did it and it worked and to our discredit we got lazy and you know for whatever reason the fence got unplugged and it worked for a year and a half never being plugged in. But unfortunately this year in the last two months two young deer that never had their nose shocked Learned they could kind of just jump through the fence. And of course, if they're jumping, they're actually not going to get shocked. They have to be on the ground to get shocked. So we're dealing now with a couple of young deer that have just kind of really messed up our strawberry crop by browsing all the big leaves off of it. We are currently Well, two things. We're going to put two more strands here. We've got them. We just got to get them up. And we're going to do those negatives. Yeah. So the point is, even if they kind of jump through here. They'll touch both, and as long as they're touching both, they complete the circuit and will get shocked. So if all of the strands are positively charged, the only way you get shocked is if you're grounded. Exactly. Whereas if you have positive, negative, positive, negative, all you have to do is touch both of them, and it completes the circuit, shocks. So that's going to be a lot more effective. Um... Yeah, you know, obviously it's adding to the cost of the fence, but still, it's relatively cheap. I mean, I think it's the cheapest for the amount of area you cover. Yeah. And so, again, it was working great. We just got complacent, and now we're paying for it. So do you think that the problem was that it was off or that you weren't baiting it again, like annually? I think it's because it was off. So you think those young deer would have come up to the fence and touched it and gotten shocked? Yeah, I think so. Even if there wasn't bait? Well, yeah, that's a good point. You know, they probably, yeah, you probably need to rebate it every so often. I really do think it's a generational thing. I think that these two young ones never got shocked before, you know, before the fence turned off. They eventually disobeyed their mommy and came and touched the fence. And it's like, oh, that's no big deal. So, yeah. So I'm definitely, I like this kind of fencing for a number of reasons. Number one, it's cheap. And number two, it's easy to maintain. And, you know, I'll just talk for a minute about the woven wire fencing that a lot of people put up. I'm not convinced about that. You know, they get eight foot woven wire fencing. It's, you know, how do you maintain that? Yeah. It's very hard to weed eat a woven wire fence. It just eats up the weed eater string. So what I've seen, and I've actually been to farms where you get vines and trees and everything growing up in it, and it will actually pull the fence down eventually. So I think woven wire fences are very high maintenance. and this you can just mow even underneath the edge of it yeah all the way mow and then just weeded a little bit around each post it's very fast to to do so you know the downside to this is you you're not keeping out your rabbits and your possums and raccoons and so that's another issue you got to deal with and I think your first line of defense there is to have some good dogs. Yeah. That you know this is their territory and of course they'll learn to respect the electric fence but they can patrol you know something that likes rabbits and... You weren't finding dogs to be successful against deer though? No. You know, I mean, in the early days, we had some dogs that did seem to do pretty good chasing them off, but they seemed to kind of grow weary of chasing off deer from my experience. And eventually, they just kind of sit and watch them. Yeah. Well, and I know we had a dog, a smaller dog, but that got attacked by a deer one time and beat her up pretty good. I mean, what's worked the best for us is when we had a pack of dogs, you know, like three dogs. You remember Chica, Cammie, and Blazer. These are... They worked very well together. She was just a mutt, a little mutt that would sniff stuff out, and they'd stand back and wait for her to flush it out. Yeah, she was a feisty little thing. Yeah, so I think dogs are a good option. The other thing I'm thinking of actually for... for our strawberries next spring is to put up a low electric mesh fence you know something similar to what they use for for portable chicken fencing but it wouldn't need to be that high just you know three feet high sure and because we have had issues with possums getting our strawberries So, I do think, you know, if there's certain crops that you're having smaller critters get at, you know, one of those mesh electric fences would work well. Yeah. Okay. Well, before we move on from this, let's just make sure we give the resources. I think all of this stuff is coming from Premier One, right? Yes. So it's kind of a nylon rope with embedded wires. Right. And it is quite inexpensive. And then you just have to run it through the plastic insulators. Yeah. Just T-post insulators. And I guess if we want to show more details, we could kind of show and how we deal with that. But they've got great catalogs and resources and of course there's lots of places you can buy electric fencing supplies. I appreciate Premier because I think they have a Premier product and they've got great informative catalogs and information and and I think high-quality products so we've we've stuck with them but yeah there are many others but yeah it you know it's it's not rocket science it's pretty simple just get a what do you call it the chargers or the fence energizer fence energizer yeah and Of course, you've got to really ground it well, and it's going to work best in soil that has some level of moisture because of the conductivity. Yeah. Yeah. So what's the solution for the deer problem that you're working on? Yeah, so what we're doing is we're ending up going back to the way we used to keep deer out, and I guess we should walk up here where... we've got the fence and this is hopefully just a temporary solution until you get the deer re-traumatized yeah but you can see i mean they've they've eaten off you know a lot of leaves and i mean this one is is looking pretty good this one got spared but you know this i mean this is set way back because All its solar panels have been eaten off, basically. So it can be devastating to your production if you don't get it under control quick. You know, I mean, I'm sure we've already been set back, but we've still got some fairly mild weather, so I'm hoping that they will bounce back. So this is something we used for 20 plus years. And very effectively, it's just a mesh deer fencing. The trade name, if you want to Google online, is Tenax, T-E-N-A-X, Centiflex, C-I-N-T-O-F-L-E-X. And you can get different weights. This is kind of a medium weight. But, you know, you want something that's got some... some heft to it and it'll last for years you know this does have a few little tears but we can zip tie that you just get some zip ties that's not a big deal so we just use eight foot T posts and the yellow electric fence insulators and you know where we started this will be our gate here so we we put a couple on but then from there You're just going down and pulling it tight and just well this you know just kind of hooking it on there and it will it will come out a little bit on the ground which is good because deer can try to go under things. So yeah you can just turn that corner there and we just roll it out and we've We've never had... Deer get through this. I mean, the only time we've had deer get in is when we've had, you know, we've left the gate open. And they'll definitely come around and snoop around until they find a way in. So this is just another really, Simple and easy way. I mean, you can put up a fence around a big field plot like this in just a few minutes. And that's why we did it. You know, we learned the things deer like, especially, you know, strawberries is a big one, green beans, sweet potatoes, sweet potatoes. Those are the big three, I would say. They will sometimes browse the tops of carrots. And yeah, I mean, if they're really desperate. They will get into other things. Look at, I'm just seeing here. It looks like they munched a little bit here. Do you find this 10, what was it called? Tenesco? 10X. 10X. Do you find this to be more effective against a lot of the little critters like rabbits and stuff, or will they still get through? I'm not sure. Sure. Get through. I think, well, you know, probably something like possums. I think rabbits might just chew holes through it. I don't know. Yeah, and I will say it doesn't hold up to weed eating at all. Right. So all you have to do when it comes to weed eating or mowing is just lift it up and hang it up here and then you just mow under it and then just drop it back down. So for a small plot, a garden, I mean, this is the way to go, I think. Yeah. You know, I haven't looked at the prices recently, but the last time we bought some, it was less than a dollar a foot. Yeah. Now, the other thing to mention is you've got to watch these guys, because didn't you get one of these in your eye one time? Scratched a cornea? I might have, actually. I remember it. You got to watch out. These things, because it's kind of like, it's a little bit disorienting almost, at least for me. It's kind of hard to tell the depth perception. And that's how it works with the deer. In fact, some companies call it invisible deer fencing because you step back a little bit and you really don't see it. Mm-hmm. And yeah, so so the deer kind of run into it likes. What is this? You know, they can't disorienting Yeah, yeah, and one thing you can do here see Depending on on the lay of the land Sometimes it's hard to get it super tight. So then you can come back and just And just... Fold it over on itself and do something like that and that'll keep it tight So it's simple, it's not a big deal, you know, of course pounding in the post, the 8-foot T-post is not fun, can be dangerous, we know people who've cracked their heads trying to lift the T-post. Pounder off of there. Yeah, I know farmers who require people to wear helmets when they put these up. It's a reasonable request. I mean, yeah, it's not really funny. So I think that the takeaway here is that there's not really necessarily just a universal solution for Taking care of critters. I mean, maybe there's a, maybe there is a, you know, a Fort Knox approach where you could just build a indestructible fence, you know, dig down in the ground and put wire mesh and, you know, it's like, but that's going to be extremely expensive. And so sometimes the, the simpler, less expensive approaches are equally as effective for the main problems. And yeah. And, and, you know, figure out your target pests, what's really causing the damage, you know, for us. Rabbits don't cause a lot of damage, you know, they'll nibble on lettuce and stuff But unless you have a major invasion of them, you know, I think the dogs keep the population down Yeah, and then you know, there's always a shotgun too. I mean, I'm a pacifist but if they're gonna Continue to try to get into the fields Sometimes you've got to up the ante. Use stronger measures. Yeah. But, yeah, and I think, you know, you remember the first time we went to Elliot Coleman's and he had kind of a vole invasion. Yep. And he was hypothesizing that they had recently put up I What did they call the woven wire fence all the way around their property and he was thinking that it had kept the the Predators. Predators out of the fields and so there was nothing to keep the voles in check. So I think you need to think about the bigger picture. Yeah. You know, if you try to fence out everything then you might be fencing in stuff you don't want in there. Yeah. You might create more problems but... So, I think these two deer fencing solutions are the best we've come up with so far. It certainly works for deer, maybe not everything else, but... No, but I do think the small electric mesh would work well for all the... for your raccoons and possums and rabbits. So, again, we'll do that on high-value crops like strawberries. And just have a portable, like, solar charger, energizer. Yeah. So that's a solution that you can do. And that's also available at Premier One is that same kind of chicken mesh. They've got solutions for everything. Yeah. And, like, I tell people, you know, electric fences keep out elephants in Africa. We've seen that work. And so... If they can keep out elephants, you should be able to keep out anything you're dealing with. Yeah, for sure. All right. Well, I hope this video has been helpful. If you have questions, feel free to drop them down in the comment section, and we'll do our best to continue to answer those questions as they come in. You have any final closing thoughts, Dad? Don't get lazy like we did. I did. Yeah. I guess that's... Once you have a solution, don't develop a system to... Don't... I mean, you know, if we kept it energized, I feel confident we wouldn't be dealing with this now, but, um, live and learn, live and learn. All right. Until next time. Happy growing.