Farm Fencing Calculator (South Africa)

Because the fences between neighbouring camps in a subdivided block are shared, one fence line serves both camps either side of it, and only needs to be built once. Fence four standalone 100 by 100 metre camps and you need 1 600 metres of fence, one full perimeter each. Split one 200 by 200 metre block into the same four camps with a shared internal cross and you only need 1 200 metres, a 25 percent saving on wire, posts and droppers for the exact same grazing area. This calculator works out the shared length for you under the subdivided block option, rather than the naive number of camps times perimeter sum that overorders materials.

12, 16 or 20 metres, depending on how sturdy a fence you need. 12 metres is used for intensive stock farming or soft soil, where you want the sturdiest fence. 16 metres suits average conditions and is the most commonly used spacing. 20 metres is used for extensive farming where stock rarely contact the fence. Jackal-proof and game-proof fences use a tighter 15 metre spacing regardless of stock type, and mesh or woven wire fencing uses 16 metres for stock or 10 metres for game.

It scales with your post spacing: 2 to 3 droppers between posts spaced 12 metres apart, 3 to 4 for 16 metres, and 4 to 5 for 20 metres, with the higher number in each pair used when mixed stock, both large and small animals, share the fence. Jackal-proof and game-proof fences use a fixed 4 droppers between standards, spacing them 3 metres apart regardless of the exact post interval chosen. Mesh or woven wire fencing doesn't need droppers at all, its own vertical stay wires do that job.

5 strands minimum for cattle only or sheep only, 6 for mixed cattle and sheep, and 7 if you're running sheep with angora goats, since goats are notorious fence creepers and need the denser wire spacing. Add 1 or 2 extra strands beyond the minimum for a boundary fence, since it takes more pressure than an internal camp division. Game fencing uses a completely different, much higher strand count, see the question on game fences below.

A standard, or intermediate post, just holds the wires at the right height and spacing along a straight run, it doesn't resist much sideways pull. A strainer post is the one the wire is actually tensioned against, at every corner, every gate, and at regular intervals along a long straight run, so it has to be far heavier and properly anchored, either with a buried concrete or timber dead man block, or a diagonal stay to a second anchor post, forming what's called a box anchor. Mixing these up in your budgeting is the single biggest way to underestimate a fencing job's real cost, since a strainer assembly typically costs several times what a standard post does.

No further than 500 metres apart on even ground for an ordinary stock fence, closer on broken terrain, and no further than 300 metres for a game-proof fence, since the wire tension in game fencing runs higher. Every corner and every gate also needs its own strainer post regardless of that interval, since a change in direction pulls the wire sideways the same way a long straight run does over distance.

It depends on the species you're fencing against. The standard South African specification is 21 strands at 2.4 metres high for Group I game, kudu, eland, impala, waterbuck and buffalo, 16 strands at 1.8 metres for Group II, gemsbok, red hartebeest, wildebeest and zebra, and 6 strands of plain wire at 1.8 metres for ostriches. Group III, smaller game like blesbok, bontebok, springbok and rhebok, is specified at 13 strands and 1.4 metres in the fencing guide this calculator uses, some suppliers still build small-game fencing denser than that though, closer to the Group II spec, so check which one your local supplier actually quotes before finalising an order. Standard spacing for the conventional strand-wire game fence is commonly quoted at 10 metre intervals by South African fencing suppliers, though the general fencing guide allows up to 15 metres.

1 metre is enough for pedestrians or moving a single animal through. 2.5 to 3 metres suits general stock movement between camps. Vehicles and farm machinery need 3.5 to 5 metres. Placing gates at the corner where four camps meet, rather than mid-fence, is the usual South African convention, since it's the natural point to drive stock toward and lets one set of gates serve all four camps.

Both, on the same product. Fencing wire is packaged as a fixed-mass coil, commonly 25, 35 or 50 kilograms, and the length that coil actually runs to depends on the wire's gauge, a thicker or double-strand wire gives you fewer metres for the same weight. A common 50 kilogram coil of double-strand barbed wire at 2 times 2.50 millimetres runs to around 540 metres, for example, while a lighter 35 kilogram single-strand coil can run to 845 metres. This calculator works in metres per roll so you don't need to convert, just check your own supplier's roll length and update the advanced price settings if it differs.

5 to 10 percent extra on wire and mesh is a commonly used rule of thumb, to cover ties, joins, tensioning losses and the extra length corners and uneven ground eat up. There's no official South African standard figure for this, so treat it as a sensible allowance rather than an exact number, and adjust it up if your terrain is broken or your fence has a lot of corners relative to its length.

No. Woven wire fencing, sold under brand names like Bonnox or Veldspan, already has vertical stay wires built into the roll at close spacing, and those do the job droppers do on a strand fence, keeping the horizontal wires evenly spaced. You only need droppers if you're stringing extra plain or barbed strands above the mesh to reach a taller fence height than the roll itself provides.

No, materials only, and that's deliberate. Fencing labour in South Africa is normally quoted separately from materials by contractors, and it varies enormously by region, terrain and how far the job is from the contractor's base, broken or rocky ground alone can add several days to a job, so there's no single reliable national labour figure that would mean much added into this total. The calculator's materials breakdown is exactly what you'd want in hand before getting a labour quote anyway, since it lets you sanity check what a contractor is actually pricing for against your own post, dropper and wire counts.

There's no fixed answer, since it depends entirely on the camp's shape, not just its area. A square uses less fence than any other rectangle of the same area, so a square 10 hectare camp, 100 000 square metres, has a side of roughly 316 metres and a perimeter of about 1 264 metres, while a long, narrow 10 hectare camp could easily need double that or more for the identical grazing area. That's exactly why this calculator asks for actual dimensions rather than a single area figure, enter your camp's real length and width, or your block's dimensions under the subdivided option, and it works out the true fence length rather than a rough area-based guess.

Yes. Below the cost breakdown, the calculator lays out the same quantities as a plain shopping list, no prices, just item names and counts, ready to take to your co-op or supplier. A print button turns that into a clean, single page printout or PDF, everything else on the page, the inputs, the tabs, the advanced settings, drops out of the printed version, leaving just the list and a one line summary of what it's for.

Because it changes what you actually buy to fasten the wire. Wire is stapled onto treated timber posts, but steel Y-standard posts use binding wire or clips instead, staples don't work on steel. Choosing timber or steel separately for your strainer, corner and gate posts and for your standard, intermediate posts in this calculator changes both the post cost and whether staples show up on your shopping list at all, a common real-world combination is treated timber for the heavy strainer and corner posts with cheaper steel Y-standards for everything in between, which is the calculator's default.