Shared fence-line with cows

[froglander]

We closed on our house last Friday! It is nearly 5 acres, and now comes the fun of moving ourselves in and getting it ready to bring my horse home.

Fencing is going to start small, with some 12’ corral panels I found on craigslist so we can get some bad (toxic) trees removed before working on fencing.

The property is long and skinny, about 1330’ x 165’. The house is approximately in the middle. We want to get the front 2 acres done first as the back is going to take some work (a bunch of trees that could stand to be thinned out a bit and a noxious vine that I need to get rid of). One side of the field will be along the driveway, so that is no big deal, but the other long side is next to a neighbor with cows and half of it is barbed wire with some of it being loose.

I would like to avoid setting a new fence inside that as it would eat into the field and the current fence is on the property line.

We have pondered different fence types as we day dream plans, but I think we are leaning towards no-climb mesh with a rail (probably Centaur/Ramm flex-rail type) on top because the sellers mentioned coyotes and bobcats periodically passing through and with two smallish (15lb) dogs, and plans to eventually have chickens and such, we would like to encourage them to pass around rather than through

I also plan to set the front pasture up as a pasture track around the outside with the pasture in the middle so I want to make sure the perimeter fence is safe since it will be a 12’ track.

Would it be okay to set a new mesh fence right next to the existing barbed wire fence? Should I talk to the neighbors and see if they would mind if we replaced the existing fence? (Would the cows be hard on it, should I put a hotwire along their side?) Any other suggestions of a good approach to doing this?

[Dance_To_Oblivion]

First thing is go meet the owners of the cow farm! They may have no problem with you replacing all the fence and that would be the ideal situation. I would not put the new fence directly on the old fence. Electric would be a must and make sure it is STRONG. Honestly the easiest thing to do is to own your own fence set in from the perimeter fence. That’s what we have done on out farm but we have 71 acres so losing a lane around the perimeter is less impactful than on 5 acres.

[UrbanHennery]

Go meet the neighbors and talk fencing. We ended up having to run all new fencing and our next door neighbor a) split the cost of a new survey with us to make sure the fence was in the right place and b) split the cost of a new shared fence in the front part of the properties. I wouldn’t have expected her to do either, but it has been really great to work together on the efforts.

Of course, the existing fence was 12’ on her side of the line, so she had an incentive to cooperate and co-fund as we could have tried to claim adverse possession (fence had been there 20+ years when we bought).

[JanM]

Consult your local authorities also. There may be fence rules on location, distance to the property line, etc. that didn’t exist when the neighbor’s fence was constructed. It would suck to build a fence, and then find out you have to move it.

[NoSuchPerson]

Been there, done that. Just run your own fence right alongside your neighbors fence. You aren’t losing any significant amount of pasture because your fence is only going to be a matter of inches inside your property line.

[Pennywell_Bay]

I’d find out the current fencing ordinance (for instance in my location is is 10 feet off the property line for new fencing, old fencing is “grandfathered”).

Take time to look at the ordinance. If something ever happens and you are not within code, it can be some hefty fines. Plus, if someone goes to sell, build, put something up and an inspector see it is not within code, you’ll have to tear it down anyway. It is worth doing things right. 5 acres is not that big that someone may not notice, may not care.

Personally, I’d run my “own” fencing and leave about 10 feet between fencing, enough to get a tractor through to mow. Personally, no matter how nice the person is, I don’t want to rely on anyone for the safety of my horses. If the farmer decides to sell, or build you’ll have to put up new fence anyway.

I’d suck it up now and invest in a nonshared fence line now along that side.

[froglander]

The property is narrow enough I really don’t want to lose 6,000 sq feet to a fenced off lane I can’t even use, especially when I am also planning to set up a 12’ lane as a track around the perimeter of the 2 acre pasture in front.

I will see what I can find out about fencing ordinances here.

[Calvincrowe]

We have a similar lot size/house configuration and ran our fences directly on the property line–no way I could not use all of my land. This summer we replaced the 740 feet that runs along the “cow” side of our property. The owners of the land are…cluelessly absent “farmers”…I think they live there occasionally and really, truly, have no idea about livestock (think calves/donkeys/goats/sheep/hogs unvaccinated, trimmed, wormed, fed…not kidding…but that’s another thread). We simply moved their crappy, rusty, falling down fence over one morning–pulled posts with field fencing still attached, stepped it over 10 feet, pounded them back in and proceeded to install a new, high quality fence of our own. We then removed their fence and stacked the materials. They thanked us, profusely.

[Mosey_2003]

You do not want to use horse mesh fencing for cows. They will push on it like crazy. Leave their barbed wire to do its job keeping the cows back and set your fence a few inches in.

[SimpleSimon]

We have a shared fence line with a hobby-farmer who has cows. We installed no-climb mesh inside our property line (also on 5 acres) and the hobby-farmer promptly tore down his saggy barb-wire fence and just proceeded to make use of our fencing. The cows loved their new built-in scratching post. We ended up putting hot-wire on the side of the fence nearest the cows approximately mid-way up the mesh. This has worked well to keep the cows off of our fence. Cows do respect hot-wire!

[Calvincrowe]

I watched our neighbor’s cows walk through/over a 4 strand barbed wire fence. I despise barbed–too many injuries to justify its use. We have field fencing on steel posts (black “chain link” fence posts set in concrete) topped with a heavy smooth wire, 5 feet tall total along our cow friend’s side of the property. Nobody has challenged it.

Yes, cows really do respect hot wire! Another neighbor keeps in a herd of 60 cow/calf pairs with a single strand!!! It boggles the mind, but they are clearly fat and happy in their field and we’ve seen no escapes in 12 years we’ve been driving by.

[ejm]

About 20 years ago we put up no climb boundary fence with a top board, with the posts on our neighbors’ side, and ran a single strand of high tensile hot wire on their side. Our neighbors keep quite a few cows, calves and bulls, and about a dozen horses, on limited acreage and we have had no problems with this setup.

[GotMyPony]

Horse Guard electric fencing - which in and of itself is a great fence - offers something that might fit your need perfectly. They sell some things called “Extenders” that you would attach to an existing fence post - like those on your neighbor’s barb wire fence - and they extend out 1 foot from the posts. So you would screw/bolt the extenders to your side of your neighbor’s posts and then the Horse Guard fence strands attach to the Extenders, putting your electric line 1’ inside the barbed wire fence, on your side. Which will keep your horses from ever getting close to the wire. Your neighbors would have to agree, of course. So you’d be buying the Extenders and enough Horse Guard fencing to do the one line along your neighbors - I would probably do 2 strands or you could do 3. But you wouldn’t be buying non-climb fence or posts or paying labor to have posts set. (Worse case if your neighbor won’t let you attach to their posts you could set your own posts right next to their fence; your posts could be as much as 16’ apart according to HG recommendations.)

You can use a hard-wired charger if you have electricity easily available or you can use a solar charger, which is what we use for our Horse Guard.

Just a thought. If you’re interested, the extender are Part #13EX, Page 19 in the HG catalog. (I don’t work for them, I just thought this product was a great idea… )

[Where_sMyWhite]

FWIW, my horses live in barbed wire fencing… One has lived in in her entire life (10+ years). If the pastures are too small or enticements are on the other side you may have injuries but IMO it isn’t the disaster that many imply.

I’ve chased cows back through a barbed wire fence so they don’t totally respect it. But, cow hide is much thicker than horse hide and soft, friendly horse fence may not be effective for cattle.

Talk to your neighbor and see what they want to do. Also research if your state is a “free range” state as that affects the “fence them in” vs “fence them out” strategy.

[froglander]

You have all given me things to consider, thank you! I am going to take a much closer look at the existing fence over the next couple of days and plot out some ideas that have resulted from this thread

[Mosey_2003]

It’s good to remember that cows aren’t just funny-looking horses They will bulldoze through things a horse wouldn’t even consider touching. I was job-shadowing on a cow farm when in middle school and I still vividly remember one cow taking offense to another and running through FIVE strands of electric to get at her, like it was nothing.

[SquishTheBunny]

My largest pasture is shared with cows on the other side. It’s “their” fence amid is pagewire with barbed wire on top. I ran a strand of electrobraid on my side to prevent the horses from laying on their fence…cheap and didn’t take up space and has worked well.

[shakeytails]

Definitely talk to your neighbors. My neighbor wanted to replace a chunk of my line fence for his cattle. It borders my hay field so I wasn’t to concerned about it. I told him as long as it wasn’t barbed wire I didn’t care. At the time I couldn’t afford to share cost either- he was fine with it and did a lovely job cleaning the fence line up and replacing the fence.

[Pocket_Pony]

I have a shared fence line with cattle - the fencing is barbed wire, which I don’t want next to my horses. One part of it had already had 3-board fence (the irrigated pasture area and barn/paddock area), and for the new dry lot I made I put up HorseGuard tape fencing. I would have done the stand-offs, but the way the posts were in the ground for the barbed wire there were things in the way that I didn’t want the horses to trip on, so I put up the HG on t-posts and their fiberglass posts set about 1-2’ away from the BW fence. Here’s a fun video of my horses the first time they saw the cows. You can see the support posts on the inside of my fence line that I didn’t want the horses to mess with/trip over - plus, I think it is probably best for them to not be right next to the cows since they aren’t my cows.

If you wanted to do the standoffs, the bumpy side of the t-post would need to be on your side of the fence, I think. It might be easiest to run a couple lines of HG on your side of the fence, using t-posts and their fiberglass posts. You don’t need to eat up a lot of space to do this and if you have nice sandy soil it will be easy to put up.

I will say that everyone around here has barbed-wire fencing for their cows and it contains them just fine - I’ve never seen a cow loose or trying to push through it. But, they do have lots of irrigated pasture to eat, so no need to go to the other side of the fence where it is dry scrubby brush!

Congratulations on your new place, froglander, you’ll have to share photos!