Electric fencing current winner

Over 80 per cent of livestock farmers have electric fencing – and its biggest job is to manage grass utilisation… and enable strip grazing. That’s the result of a national survey with Britain’s dairy farmers, carried out by PEL, the New Zealand fencing company.

While 85 per cent of producers had barbed wire fencing, only 30 per cent had natural hedges, 10 per cent stone walls, and 2.5 per cent ditches. Electric fencing came second at 82 per cent, with post and wire recording 64 per cent, and post and rail 40 per cent. Obviously, the majority of farms had more than one type of fencing.

About one-third of farms had permanent electric fencing, and two-thirds temporary, with 31 per cent of the farmers erecting the wire themselves.

“We wanted to see how important electric fencing was on-farm,” says Steve Shaw, business development manager of PEL fencing. “Clearly it is very important, and a key management tool for the vast majority of dairy farmers.

“With all the pressures facing producers – falling returns and increasing costs, and the escalating cost of farm labour – tools that make managing the farm easier are in big demand. We see this as a big growth market as farmers try to control grazing and utilisation even further, and maybe bring more land back into grass production.”

The survey also showed that the most regular purchase was wire, tape or netting, followed by posts and energisers. And over 90 per cent of those surveyed said they had bought new product in the past three years.