Twine
Electric fencing twine or poly-wire is a good choice for temporary electric fences for most animals as it’s more visible than steel wire. It is lightweight and easy to handle, install and rewind when used as a portable fence. It is less durable than steel but well suited to strip grazing and is easily tensioned.
Twine is ideal for temporary grazing, strip or rotational grazing, pet control, garden and pond protection.
Electric fence twine or poly-wire should only be used to fence slow moving animals such as dairy cows and is not advised for horses as they need either tape or rope as it’s more visible.
Tape
Electric fence tape provides greater visibility than wire or twine and is therefore more suitable for fast moving animals like horses. While the reinforced edges help protect the poly-tape from wear and tear it is subject to increased wear in windy conditions. Becasuse of this, it’s best to select the narrowest tape appropriate to your fence. 20mm electric tape is suitable for most situations but 40mm wide tape is not recommended if your field or paddock is in a windy area unless it’s well secured using tape insulators that clamp the tape tightly. When connecting two lines of fencing tape together it is imperative to have a good electrical connection between the conductors so it’s best to use proper joiners / tape connectors.
Rope
Electric fencing rope, or poly-rope as it’s often called, is the perfect electric fencing conductor for horses. It’s visible, it’s very strong and it won’t catch the wind as fence tape is prone to do. The fencing rope comes in a variety of specifications and strengths. The polyropes with stainless steel conductors are ideal for short to medium-length fence lines and the high-spec ropes containing the superior tinned copper conducting lines are for longer distance fencing and higher powered energisers. Rope is generally used with wooden posts and held by ring insulators screwed into the fence posts or distance insulators which can be used to keep the fencing polyrope about 10″ out from the fence. Rope can also be used with plastic posts for temporary and mobile horse paddocks.
Electric Netting
Electric netting can be the ideal way to keep foxes out and your animals in. It is used extensively for poultry, sheep, rabbits and occasionally goats. All but the bottom horizontal poly wires are electrifiable and both the poultry and rabbit electric nets start off with small spacings at the bottom and increase as the net height increases. The sheep electric net has a larger bottom spacing to make allowances for the grass height in the field. Both the poultry electric nets and the rabbit electric netting come in an olive green which blends well into the surroundings and is more pleasing on the eye and the sheep netting comes in orange for easy visibility in the field.
While the netting is an excellent way of keeping your animals in and foxes & rabbits out, it does tend to be more prone to earth leakages than other methods of electric fencing so please consider this when making your choice of energiser.
All the electric nets for sheep, chickens and rabbits have clips at the top where the horizontal poly wires converge and can be easily joined to other nets.