Electric Fencing at Greatworth Hall

Over the past year we have purchased and used more electric fencing than we have in the past 20 or so years. It is becoming a key part of farm equipment and something you’re likely to come across when out on a walk while using the countryside footpaths, so we thought it’d be interesting for you to know why we are using it so much lately.

One of the main reasons electric fencing is increasingly being used is because the materials needed to permanently fence a field, either with wire and posts or with post and rail, is very expensive. It can cost well over a thousand pounds to fence a small field using wire or rail and often the wooden stakes rot over a number of years and then the job has to be done again.

Another consideration that influences whether we use electric fencing is how often we will use the field for livestock. Most of Greatworth Hall has been arable land for the past 20 - 30 years and the fences have not been kept livestock-proof, because it’s an expense that isn’t needed for arable land. However, with farming techniques changing and a push to integrate livestock with arable rotations again, we need some way of keeping livestock in fields where they might be for only a short period of time. The idea is that after harvesting a winter crop in a field, to help with weed control and soil health, we will plant a cover crop which is nutriously beneficial to livestock. They will eat this cover crop over the winter months before planting a spring crop for the following harvest. Electric fencing is a useful temporary way of giving livestock a set area of a field before moving them on.

Finally, electric fencing can be useful to ‘mob graze’ or ‘paddock graze’ our fields. This means using an electric fence to split a field up into sections and move the livestock from one section to another, allowing the fodder some regrowth time. This is a technique we will use more in the coming months when the grass has grown a bit more.

Something we are careful to do is to make sure the footpaths are always accessible. We do our best to run an electric fence so that the break point is where the footpath is and we put a gate in to ensure walkers can still get through. We also keep the wildlife margins around the arable fields clear so that nature can continue to thrive without disturbance from our livestock.