We bought a small former horse farm a few years a ago. We reinforced the old horse pasture with wire mesh fencing to keep our dogs in.
Now we want to fence in a wooded part of our property for the dogs. We want to continue to use the welded wire/mesh fence along with some T posts. However we have a slight black bear problem in our neighborhood. She has been known to wander into our yard to graze and look for fallen nuts near the winter. I've had to patch up our fence a couple of times. I've seen bears take down strong privacy fence too, so I was going to opt for the addition of an electric wire along the outside of the fence.
I'm worried about the hot wire touching the not hot welded wire and becoming less effective. I'm also worried about putting the insulators over the welded wire; not sure they will fit. Has anyone had experience with doing this combo?
Best Answer
There are standard electric fence insulators for T-posts.
Some only go on one side of the post - others have more options.
If you cannot get adequate spacing from the T-posts to prevent shorting, or cannot find insulators that fit with the mesh, you can run a separate electric fence a short distance outside the mesh, on T-posts or on fiberglass posts. With a tightly tensioned mesh and electric fence wire/string/tape little spacing is needed - but if the current mesh fence is loose, it's probably going to be easier to run a second fence, which can generally get away with fewer posts.
Electric fences in the woods require regular inspections to be effective. Branches and trees fall on them and short them out, break them, or hold them to the ground.