[Kiran]

I'm hoping someone can offer some advice to a problem I have that is genuinely getting ti the point its going to start giving me mental health issues.

We have been invaded on almost a daily basis by the same 4 cattle. 2 Belted Galloway and 2 Highlands. They cause havoc when they get in and due to by fields being wet (on going remediation on this problem) they are wrecking the fields, they have destroyed the majority of a new fruit orchard, killed off one bee hive and knocked the others over and trashed fences in their wake.

I have spoken to the owner who basically says you border a common it's your problem, although he was quick enough to ask ti run them through our land when they escaped onto the road through someone else's land but that's a different story.

Anyway  the issue I have is that it's a long boundary approximately half a mile. I've been clearing and maintaining the fence line and this has been working since last year when we had the major problem with the cattle invading. I walk the fence line atleast once a week and it's all up. The extra posts I have added are taller than the original so I've added a third strand of barbed wire and they're still jumping it at 5ft high. The cows typically only come in at dark so all I end up seeing is 4 sets of eyes glowing when I go out to secure the ducks and chickens and I have to wait for the next day to inspect the damage that i hear from them crashing over the fences. I struggle to get any machinery to the area as it largely wooded so all this work had been done manually and its absolutely sole destroying seeing it being undone by half tonne wrecking machines. I've moved them on so many times that they run as soon as they know I'm there which is usually before I've even seen them as its dark.

Any advice very gratefully received as I can't start progressing until this is dealt with and at the moment I'm spending good money after bad trying to rectify the problem

[chrismahon]

We had this problem last year with our neighbour's four 'naughty boys'. Six times they broke in by squeezing through, or under, or jumping over the four barbed wire strands in different places at the back of our house. Their incentive was very poor grazing on his side and good grazing on ours. Solved by a single strand of solid steel electrical fence wire set at a metre high on standoff fixings on his side of the fence. First shock and they avoided the fence completely. Occasionally they remind themselves to avoid it. Simple to set up because the existing fence wire is set as the earth circuit.


Are you sure that's how they get in? Have you actually seen them? I wonder if they don't get into yours via a neighbours land because we had that problem as well? They broke through the fence on the other side of the land and walked down the lane into ours. We now have two strands of electric fencing at the front.

[Kiran]

Thanks for your response. Based on the visible hair on the barbed wire I'm pretty sure over my fence is the point of entry. Also in my now vast experience of chasing them off my land they have a tendency to exit at the same point they entered. I've seen them leaving over/through the fence but I normally know they're there when I see them in one of the fields.

If the single strand of electric fencing will do the trick then I would consider that a win and worth the work. If that is effective I'll install a wire along the whole common boundary.

Thanks again, much appreciated

[Kiran]

Well over a year has passed and we've only had 2 minor cattle incursions since installing the electric fence, one of which was following a heavy story and a tree collapsing the fence and the other was embarrassingly due to fence maintenance that I missed, so thanks again for your help and advice with this.

My next phase, and it's going to be a big one, is to redo the boundary at the edge of the woods which is in a terrible state  but didn't want to repair it all and have half tonne wrecking machines trying to climb over it and destroy it. I'm now confident that is approach will work and I can continue on from the last section using the same energiser etc.

[Rosemary]

Thanks for the update. It's helpful for those looking for help in the future to know whether a proposed solution actually worked