Green Fencing

 

When you put fencing up for stock, be they horses, cattle or sheep, there are a lot of different methods that you can use.

For studs, there are two main types; the traditional post and three-rail and the specialist stud fencing like Keepsafe. As you can see from the picture below we favour the traditional.


So how environmentally friendly is this type of fencing?

Typically, a tonne of wood will create about sixty metres of fencing. Incidentally, if you burned this wood it would produce about 1.8 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

So if you use sustainably grown softwood for your fencing, a typical one hectare field the size of a football field, would fix approximately seven tonnes of carbon dioxide. It sounds a lot, but it is about the same amount of carbon dioxide produced by about 14.5 Imperial Gallons of diesel in a car engine. This would only take my Jaguar just under 600 miles.

I would also estimate that the specialist fences use more energy in their production as steel is involved.

Both types of fencing probably need as much energy to put them up.

It probably illustrates how important energy use is compared to the choice of such things as building materials. Obviously, those building materials can be chosen to save energy.

But it is in care and maintenance that the traditional post and rail wins.

Look at this problem, where a rail was dislodged probably by a deer or some machinery.


The repair kit is shown below.


The specialist wire fencing would need heavy machinery to retension the fence. But perhaps the worst problem is the time it generally takes to get the contractor to come and fix the problem. In that time, the field will often be out of commission.

So although we've used wire fencing before, we won't again.