What is the best fence for pastures?
Fences have two purposes: keeping animals in and keeping predators out. The wood fences of fancy horse farms or New England stone walls may succeed at the former, unless you’re trying to keep a bull away from cows in season, or unweaned lambs away from their mothers. To keep predators out, you will probably need woven wire, high-tension, or electric fences. Stopping a mother coyote who is trying to feed her kit may require 48-inch woven wire with additional strands of barbed wire at ground level and above the woven wire, or 6-7 strands of high-tension electric fencing. Cattle and horses that are trained well to electric fences can be fenced in with a single wire. Many horse farms prefer to use a highly visible wire or one of the wide braided conductors. Smaller animals and animals with heavy coats need multi-wire fences to contain them, and pigs need carefully-placed ground level wires — barbed or electric — to keep them from digging their way out. Woven wire fences are relatively simp
