How high off the ground should a single strand electric fence be for beef cattle?

Gettin tired of chasing the neighbor's steers when they get out. There's 5 foot tall square woven fence, with a single strand of electric at about the 4 and a half foot height. The cows are just pushing under the fence between poles.

I am thinking the electric strand should be more like knee to thigh high, not chest.

Sounds like your neighbor needs a new fence. They would not be pushing under a decent woven wire fence.

The bottom of the woven wire is about 12 inches off the ground in some spots, I am sure that isn't helping things out.

They just put it up last year. You can see the fencing bowed out between every post.

Wow their pushing through a 5 ft. woven wire fence. Once they get used to finding ways out they are tough to stop. You are correct in my opinion Kyle the electric hot wire should be 2-3 feet off the ground and far enough from the woven wire so that it won't short out when they push it into the fence. They may need to get a stronger fencer with more charge too, until the animals learn to respect the fence again. Cattle have very strong neck muscles and yes they need to have their heads lowered to create the push, so 4 foot or more is way too high. They are almost through before they even hit the hot wire. The best way to me would be to have them put 1 to 1.5 foot arms on the wovn wire fence posts and have the electric in further and lower and hotter. With all this rain lately and if they have a smaller fencer there and any places where the electric is grounding there maybe little to know charge in the electric fence.

Bryce

They've got 6 inch arms on the wire.

And they are pushing under the woven, not through.

I'll figure out how to talk to them about lowering the line they have.

not to likely to go over a 5 foot

about knee high on the inside would probably work very well , hard for a cow to get under knee high

at the farm it is 3 wire on heavy PVC posts , high tension wire

post about every 30 feet

I can lay on the ground and roll under the bottom wire

bottom is hot middle is not , top hot

I would say it is about 16 , 32, 48 for wires
a few of the fences have 4 wires or when new young cattle are brought in and I think they are 12,24,36,48 generally with the wire one up from the bottom being ground.
and that is all there is no woven
to divide that up inside the fence it is step in posts that fall about mid thigh and poly twine on spools
once that single twine line is set up in the step in stakes they eat right up to it and will not step over it you have to reel up a section for them to pass then you put it back and they are in the next section for a couple days.

Here in my area, having an electric fence to contain your cattle is only half of the equation. If you’re keeping cows in a small pasture, you’d better also think about what you’re trying to keep out. Bears. I’d say the majority of lost cattle in my parts are caused by a bear getting through the fence, and scattering the cows to parts unknown. Folks posting on Facebook that their cows are missing, bears are usually involved.

crotch high. Every time I try to go over one I get bit....

Is that measurement from a tall man or a short man???

About 30 inches for average beef cattle. Old single strand barbed wire makes a good E fence. The barbs push thru the hair. Most important feature is it is a HOT fence. Well grounded 30 mile AC fencer to start. You want to hear a snap and a grunt when they tangle with it. Once........

If baited, same fence would work on a bear. Hang a tin can full of bear bait on the fence. One lick or sniff is all it should take.

Guy's will use a battery powered unit to circle their camp site in Bear/Squatch country. Very smart move.

Once cows, goats, dogs or most other animals figure out they can get out, it gets hard and expensive to contain them with even a good fence system. For a fence to work well, animals have to believe it's impenetrable, so they never try it. There's not much that will stop a full grown bull once it gets used to escaping. At some point it's just better and safer to cull cattle that have learned to escape.

Keith

Sounds like they have a grass/hay problem as much as a fence problem. Full steers are usually content where they are.

I've got electric on both sides of my property to keep neighbors cattle out.i run 2 strands of high tensile one between knee and waist high,the other chest high.it is for 100 miles of fence at 6 joules.its not the length that matters its the output of juice.make sure you have a good ground.i run 2 8ft copper rods in the ground and attach.your ground is as important as the fencer itself.mine is 110 volt not battery operated. Weeds,grass,brush can all hinder the output of the fencer.

For calves and cows 28-30”

I run 4 strands, 1’-4’ all hot. Make sure the ground is working. Keep em full.

If there are 5 foot of woven wire and the cattle can put their heads down and push it up and crawl under it that fence never got tightened enough or they have a significant shortage of posts to hold that fence together.
We ran 50 cow dairy herds eith single strands of hot wire and they got out once during a bad hail storm that stampeded the whole herd. The cows backs were so bruised up you could not touch them and we had the surge hanging buckets at the time. Milked most of them for a couple days w/o the straps. Some had their eyes swollen shut. No crops left in the field either. We are actually running a flock of sheep with a couple strands of hot wire and that is working OK too.

Bryce

Must be talk guy cause us short ones get zapped

So like Jbyrd said crotch high 28-30 have to be about the 2 most common inseams of pants

figure even wearing 32 inch inseam pants that isn't a lot of room for error

If running cow/calf operations you really need 2 wire fence @ 15"- 20" and 30" - 36" heights above the ground.

If cows have learned they can push thru the fence ... 18" - 24" above the ground. Pushing thru cattle fence ... poles are to far apart and fencing needs to be tensioned.


With that, I had one heifer that would constantly push thru 3 strand (top & bottom hot, center ground) high tension wire connected to a high output energizer, wearing a neck chain and 12" drop of chain.

checked mine yesterday the old fashion way (grass is to short for that),,,,Rolled me over backwards......Aint laughed at myself that hard in a while

My exact thoughts ! Most likely lack of feed.

Electric fence needs to be nose high to the animal your keeping in. Since the cattle are already going under I would recommend two wires one 12 to 18 inches of the ground and one about 30 inches high. It really should be put up on its own post a couple of feet off the other fence and needs to be tight. It could be put back closer to the other fence once the animals are retrained.

It sounds like the real problem is the foot of space under the woven wire. It is enticing the animals to reach under which leads to them pushing on it and eventually right onto the other side. That is far too high off the ground. One hot wire up high is pretty standard to keep the animals from reaching over and crushing the fence down, but by mounting the woven wire up high they have inadvertently invited the opposite problem. The best solution would be to take it all down and put it back up properly. Second best would be to run another hot wire 18-24 inches high to give them a good bite next time they try to go under.

We have over 1300 acres of pasture with only 1 hot wire nothing else. It keeps in our dairy cows, bulls, about 20 angus and hereford bulls and most of the calves. We run it hot and about 30 inches off the ground.

Elect fence post gets pushed into the ground via the triangle at the bottom so the top of the triangle is flush with the ground and then the yellow insulator goes on the post a couple inches lower than the top of it. Elect fence usually hits you about middle of your thigh or so if you are six foot tall. If they pushing against it constantly then there isn't enough juice in it. Its not plugged in or something. Most likely something is laying up against it and getting zapped / grounded instead and its not zapping cows. Usually you walk or ride a fence to make sure its not up against a fence post or tree limb or tall grass. Hopefully that helps. If you take a hammer with a wooden handle and touch it to the fence and lay it over to a post you should be able to make a spark. The light and sound of the spark tells you how strong it is. If it barely does anything then thats why the cows don't care to touch it.