Ozark RFD:

Moveable electric fencing has become an important grazing management tool for cattle producers over the past half-century, or so.

In some cases it has almost eliminated the need for winter hay, but in more it simply allows managers to more efficiently utilize their pastures. My first experience with hot wire was even more basic. It was just to keep the cows at home. It was August 1957. We had moved from a rented farm near Republic to 39 brushy acres in southern Dallas County. The old farm had practically no fences, except those kept up by the neighbors.

I was 9 years old, going on 16 and had never even heard of electric fencing, but I was to quickly learn about it. Before we could unload our small herd of Jersey milk cows, we had to come up with some sort of fence. Dad’s answer was electric. Though I’d never built any sort of fence before, I was soon helping Dad nail white porcelain insulators to persimmon trees and stringing a single, thin wire around some five acres near the barn.

The insulators were held by double- headed nails with little, leather cushioning rings between the nail heads and the brittle porcelain. One misplaced or overly zealous swing would shatter them. A more zig-zag fence was never built, owing to the random availability of trees and the late hours we worked. Much of it was finished by flashlight so we could be

ready for the cows the next day. Powering the whole, serpentine project was a bright red Western Auto Wizard “Weed Chief” charger. Its pulsating buzz and blinking orange light would become a literal metronome for our twice-daily “dance” with the cows. Hanging by baling wire from a nail in the barn, every hour of the day or night it’s omnipresent pulse was like the heartbeat of our farm. Electric fencing in 1957 was definitely not “cool.” It fell more into the category of “poor folks have poor ways.” It was a stopgap, a quick fence in an emergency — but, like many temporary fixes on the farm, “electric” became a permanent fixture. I don’t know what the options were — remember, I was just 9-years-old — but I don’t think they included polywire, plastic or fiberglass fence posts, line strainers, wire spinners, lightning arrestors or many of the other innovations used by serious pasture managers today. If any of those were available, they never made it from the farm supply to our place. Electric fencing was a bit primitive, but effective — as long as we kept the weeds cut back and limbs off the wire. It did take looking after.

We began stringing wire between fence posts, rather than trees, as quickly as we could build the fences, and in later years Dad began using plastic insulators, but he never ceased being “electric.” Long after the milk cows were gone, the electric fencing was still around. For several years it was a “hot wire” that kept his American Royal champion 3,000- pound Belgian Bull at home. As anyone who grew up with it can attest, electric fences can contribute to some misadventures — especially when young boys are involved — but none on us ever suffered any real harm. Slipping on wet grass while straddling a wire can make a fellow jump. We were typically pretty careful around a hot wire. I never tried to trick my brothers, but Russell was once jolted to tears when he grabbed a wire I assured him wasn’t hot. I’d just held it down to cross and was sure it was safe — failing to take in account the leather gloves I was wearing. My barehanded brother never forgave me. On the positive side, I found an electric fence the ideal tool for containing my first FFA project, a hog I penned in the corner of the woods. She wouldn’t even cross where the fence had been when I gave her more woods to roam. A spunky Jersey bull calf named Lad was less easily deterred. I watched him test the wire with his nose, then back and a take a run at and clear through it. By the time he was a yearling, Dad had hung a length of chain from the ring in his nose to give him a really good jolt, but that bull was just plain mean. He was gone before he was two years old.

Yesteryear’s emergency fencing has gained new respect in recent years as a vital and relatively inexpensive tool for pasture management. The increasing popularity of temporary electric fencing to improve pastures and increase production has definitely removed electric from the “poor folks have poor ways”category. Electric is cool. Porcelain insulators nailed to persimmon trees never will be.

RFD “Favorites” are previously published columns selected by author Jim Hamilton while he takes a break from the weekly routine. Read more of his works in “Ozarks RFD 2010-2015,” available online from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or from the author. Copyright 2023, James E. Hamilton.