Maria Lane

Jay Angler wrote:

Maria Lane wrote:I wonder if it would be worth putting chicken wire on the bottom 1.5’ to 2’ on top of the wire, to still keep the deer from digging under but also block some of those small things. Do you think those small animals would just climb over it if it’s just the bottom couple feet?

How's your owl population? Our little things are far more inclined to dig under because they're likely to get picked off if they go up. I would go out 6" and up at least 2 feet to accomplish this effect.

I’m not sure we have any at all, though we have thought of putting in an owl box to help get rid of snakes. I wonder if the chicken wire would keep snakes out too if the holes are small enough.

So we need to leave some slack to prevent digging 👍🏻

Cristo Balete wrote:Maria, I put a detailed description of the chicken wire fence I've used for 30 years in the description below.  If you are going to put a real commitment into a garden, then put a real commitment into a fence.  It's not fun going to bed at night willing your plants and food to be there in the morning.  Odds are, slowly but surely, they won't be, unless you do it right.

The initial investment may seem like a lot, but it lasts.  I'm near enough to the coast to get salt water mist that the fog pushes inland at night, and the first sections of chicken wire lasted 7-10 years depending on the manufacturer, which we can't really know about.  100 feet of my original fence is still up from 2006, not rusted.  Replacing it in sections is pretty easy.

I get the most damage from little critters: packrats, rabbits, foxes, so I turn out the bottom edge of the chicken wire about 6 inches and let the weeds grow through it to hold it down, then if they find a way in there will be a little trail that's obvious and you can find it quickly.

Your questions about posts in the ground, the wind is an issue.  You wouldn't think that chicken wire would resist the wind, but it does.  So go deep with the posts, and do a lot of reinforcement on the corners.  Check out cattle fencing for corner post design.  It's designed to keep in cows, about 1500 pounds apiece, they do a lot of pushing, and rubbing,

I couldn't find a way to put a link, but you can search on this:

Forum: permaculture, Living fences for intense deer browse?

Hi there!

We do have a lot of very very heavy wind and that was a concern I had with the chicken wire, also the chicken wire available near me has a lot of bad reviews for breaking or rusting and I am concerned the deer will just break through it.

I wonder if it would be worth putting chicken wire on the bottom 1.5’ to 2’ on top of the wire, to still keep the deer from digging under but also block some of those small things. Do you think those small animals would just climb over it if it’s just the bottom couple feet?

The cattle fencing thing is a great idea I will check that out for stabilizing the corners. The wire I’m planning to use shouldn’t create wind resistance much but I need to assume the deer might try and step on the wire or push it down.

I feel like 8’ posts 2’ in the ground will be more stable than 10’ posts 2’ in the ground.

I don’t know how to add links either I will look that up.

Thanks! :)

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Crazy idea, but I wonder if UV-glow fishing line might supplement your fencing and make it appear taller / deeper.

This is the stuff they sell to bass fishermen for night fishing -- the lines glow like a Christmas tree in UV light. Cabelas/Bass Pro usually carry it.

I've used this successfully to keep birds from crashing into my windows. Birds, bees, and deer can see much further into the ultraviolet than we can. That's why deer are on the move at dusk -- they can see better than their predators.

That’s really interesting. And we had a bird knock itself out temporarily last year so I will certainly look into putting some of that up for that reason
too.


I was just thinking about putting up the wire fencing, then what if I did the fishing line fence 2 to 3 feet out side of the wire fence? The wire fence is the actual barrier, but I wonder with enough time would they step on the wires and bend their way in. If there was fishing line every 5” or 10” for 4’ or so a couple feet outside of the 8’ wire fence, they would have to spend a lot of time there either figuring  out how to get through or break the fishing line before they could even investigate the real fence I wonder if that would discourage them from trying.

Glowing fishing line would maybe keep that focused on that outer (much cheaper) fence especially if they know that even getting through it would leave them with another fence to go through, and if they only climb through it they are scrunched between them.

Mike Haasl wrote:I know.  This is just the galvanized wire that can be used to convey electricity.  But it also works as just cheap wire.

Thanks! If I can use this stuff it cuts the cost a lot. I might get a roll and test it.

I do wonder if the deer would just step on it and bend it to get though. I wonder if it’s possible to get it taut enough that they couldn’t do this.

Mike Haasl wrote:Where in the world are you located?  Here I can get a 1/4 mile of electric fence wire for $40  (Fleet Farm).

I think that if you do 10' t posts (2' in the ground) and run this wire every 6" low and every 10-12" up high, it should work just fine to keep deer out.  They're most likely to try to go under it.  I think you can use fewer t posts if you make some sort of wire holder in between the t posts.  It could just be a piece of wire that's staked to the ground, runs up and loops around the lowest wire, goes up to the next one and loops tightly around it, then up to the next one, and so on.

It’s not going to be an electric fence. Is thst type of wire rigid? We need something they won’t be able to bend and climb through. If that worked it would get it down to about 400$ (1/3 of what the other would cost)

What I was looking at was just smooth wire 12.5 gauge.

And I’m on the east cost I was looking at places like Tractor Supply and Home Depot  

J. Syme wrote:there is an overlap between deer proof and people proof... fencing should be easy for you to get in and hard for pest to cross. I've tried tall fence short fence wolf pee hanging pie plates, cd's and other scary reflective things.  all i did was create a better grade of ninja deer that don't care about wolf pee smell.  eventually i got a sufficient food plot planted for the deer away from the orchard & garden that they now only come up occasionally to raid the garden. the trick is to make other food sources easier. one gizmo that was very effective in scaring the deer away is the motion detection activated sprinkler system. the draw back was it's also very effective at making a grumpy wet wife who just wanted to pick a few tomatoes for lunch.... that system has been abandoned and we're on the land of plenty alternatives method. the food plot took about 3 years to get well established, well worth the effort. good luck training your deer.

Thanks We have one acre and our house is in the middle of it so unfortunately planting food for deer anywhere on it would make it worse (we’ve also lined the perimiter with small fruit trees and bushes so it’s too late for anything like that and it would be too close anyway).

I thought about the sprinkler thing but it would take a ton of them and also our deer are kind of domesticated (best we can tell it’s just one small herd of deer, but they often walk around really close to the houses and people’s dogs, they are not spooked easily).

Judith Browning wrote:

Maria Lane wrote:Hello!

I am building a one acre ish garden that encloses my property, and if we don’t get fencing in soon the deer are going to destroy everything.

Permanent fencing is too expensive right now. And electric fencing will not work for us for a variety of reasons. We also can’t install woven wire/rolled fencing for a variety of reasons so this has left us with only weird options.

I like the appearance of wire fences like they use for horses, just single strands spaced evenly apart up the fence. Or they use barbed for livestock (we will not use barbed wire, I cannot deal with a trapped half dead deer)

The fence lines are also sloped. Most of them. This design would remove all the issues with installing on a slope and be pretty easy for me to install myself.

What I wanted to do was single strand wire fencing. I’m just concerned the deer will try and climb through it or won’t see the upper strands well enough and try and jump it, becoming entangled.

Do you think (non-barbed) wire fence would work if the wire was close enough together? String between t posts, maybe wooden post for corners.

I had thought maybe wire every 6” up from the ground til your at about 3’ maybe then every 10’ from there to the top? 8’ tall. Would be even better if could use plastic garden twine or something for the top few feet considering it’s just a visual deterrent from jumping at that point and the wire is extremely expensive because of how many strands I would need and the fact that it would be about 900 feet of it.

Is there any chance it would work? Would they just try and bend the wires and climb through?

Thank you!


EDIT: Thank you for the suggestions of other kinds of fencing, but I have considered a lot of options and would like to hear people’s thoughts on making this one specifically.

I think this could work with several modifications.

Are you thinking electric fence wire?
I'm not sure what other gauge is available on a big roll.

I would go for a nine foot height.  We had 8' steel posts which only stick out above ground six feet or so and then we added electric fence separaters to extend another three feet.

I think you would need to add some more verticle elements though to add enough rigidity to the horizontal wires for them to keep deer out...maybe cane, small bamboo, cut saplings, maybe mill ends if you have a saw mill near by?  

This all depends on how refined it needs to look

I'm not sure of prices either...that's a lot of wire and steel posts seemed way high last we priced them.

No they wouldn’t be electric at all. We were just hoping it would be too difficult to climb through. We won’t be able to do higher than 8’ - the tallest t posts we can get are 10’ and we have crazy wind so we will need to put them 2’ into the ground for stability. (EDIT sorry I missed the part where you said you used extenders not taller posts the first time I read it) And i’m not sure I can even install something that tall, we might have to use 8’ and put something on the wooden corner posts to extend for the top strings

The priority needs to be keeping the deer out but ideally we need something neat looking (we have one acre surrounded by other houses we aren’t out that far in the country)

The wire is very expensive (125$ for a 1320’ roll last time I checked, but it would take a lot of strands at the bottom to discourage climbing through, I was hoping we could just use some high visibility string/twine for the top few feet since those feet just need to discourage jumping and that would be a lot less expensive)


Edit (also we were planning on t posts every 15’ I wonder if that will be enough rigidity for that bottom 5’ of wire that they can’t push it down or climb through)

REPLY

The cost of the electric fence wasn’t the issue for us - we share property lines with 3 other people. And also have deliveries often. The neighbors have a collective 8 cats we really don’t want to kill or injure. We just couldn’t figure out how to make it work without a lot of problems. We can’t have it on a few inches from the gate deliveries are being made through and we get deliveries as late as 10 pm . We also get deer browse in the middle of the day. 🤷🏼‍♀️

We’ve got a bout 2k for this fence but that has to include 2 small gates, one driveway gate and all the t posts. So the material for the fencing itself can’t be more than 1k.

I’m also concerned about non-barrier fencing options (electric fencing is psychological not a barrier) We planted 21 fruit trees that got wrecked by deer last year then reallly struggled. If we “try” a fence like they and it doesn’t work they could do a lot of really expensive damage.