Why Build High-Tensile Fences?
By this time, most farm people have at least heard of high-tensile fencing, but most do not realize all the possible advantages. I grew up on the family dairy farm which my wife, Phyllis, and I now own. My dad fenced the milk cows with two strands of 12 1/2 gauge barbed wire and the heifers with three strands. My brother, Jim, and I had the endless job of keeping the electric fence hot. The animals stayed in quite well as long as the fence was hot enough. Of course, we had a real challenge when we took breeding aged heifers out of the pens to the back pasture.
They had to learn the limits to their new freedom; this often took several days of chasing animals and fixi
ng fence. If the animal went through the fence before it knew to expect a shock, it commonly knocked a wire off a porcelain insulator onto a steel post. The fence would be dead and ineffective. A number of bleeding backs and legs appeared in those first days of pasture.