Episode 40: Highlights on Solar Powered Watering Systems and Grazing with Dr. Jeff Lehmkuhler
On this episode of the Maine Farmcast, Colt travels to the Commonwealth State of Kentucky to talk about alternative and direct marketing strategies we use here in Maine with beef producers in Kentucky. While there, he catches up with good friend and repeat podcast guest, Dr. Jeff Lehmkuhler and attends the Heart of America Grazing Conference and Pasture Ecology Workshop. Dr. Lehmkuhler shared a solar powered water well system. They also got to take part in a presentation where pastoralists discussed pros and cons of the different electric fencing wires, temporary posts, fence storage solutions, and chargers.
Episode Resources
- Learn more about the Heart of American Grazing Conference
(If you would like to see a similar conference in Maine, please send us an email at extension.farmcast@maine.edu) - Learn more about Dr. Lehmkuhler
Automated Transcript
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 00:24
One. Take it away.
Colt Knight: 00:28
Welcome to the Maine Farmcast. I am your host, Dr. Colt Knight, associate extension professor and state livestock specialist for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension. And today, I am in the Bluegrass State with my good friend, Dr. Jeff Lehmkuhler, extension beef specialist. Dr. Lehmkuhler, it’s great to have you back on the podcast, and I am enjoying my trip to Kentucky.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 00:52
Well, Dr. Knight, I know it’s not exactly been a vacation because I’ve kept you pretty busy from soil sampling and getting your expertise in reading GPS coordinates as well as doing the field day here. We just got finished up at Elizabethtown, Kentucky doing a, small little demonstration at the Heart of America Pasture Ecology workshop that they had, and it was a little bit cool here. I think you brought the cold weather down with you.
Colt Knight: 01:22
I like the cold weather. I’ve got all this insulation built in, and it just makes me feel right at home.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 01:30
Well, I don’t mind the cold either, but, you know, it’s it’s just a little bit sneaking up on us. We are in the October, it seems like, already, and the leaves are starting to change. But, I I could take another couple days of 65, 70 degree weather before we start dipping into the the thirties and forties.Colt Knight: 01:50
As our, as our good friend, George R R Martin said winter is coming.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 01:55
That is true. Winter is coming.
Colt Knight: 01:58
But, Dr. Lehmkuhler actually invited me to Kentucky to help him with a series of workshops on, direct marketing on the livestock side of things. We we did some work on this heart of America Pasture Ecology workshop. And one of the demonstrations well, actually two of the demonstrations that I wanted to talk about here on the podcast. One of the demonstrations were, they highlighted all the different technologies that we utilize for temporary fencing.
Colt Knight: 02:32
And what I thought was especially cool about this workshop is they went through all the different little insulators and stakes that you can use, which ones were junk that broke quickly, the good ones that last, which ones you use in different situations. And I leaned over to Dr. Lehmkuhler and I said, oh, we need to do this in, in Maine. And he said, you know, I have one of those kits, so maybe we could schedule a grazing workshop in Maine where we could go over this stuff. But in the meantime, maybe we could discuss that here on the podcast.
Colt Knight: 03:07
And then the other thing, that Dr. Lehmkuhler showed me is he developed a solar pump that will pull water out and work on a, water shutoff valve so that you can pull water out into your water troughs. They will self fill each other, and it’s all a solar system. And I have never seen that before. And I thought it was really interesting because the specs on that pump look amazing.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 03:37
Well, Colt, you know, one of the things that we face, unfortunately down here is, we’re seeing warmer summers, less precipitation in the summer months. It’s coming seems like our weather patterns are shifting where we’re getting more precipitation into the late fall, winter time frame, less than the June, July, August when we really need it. So we’re having to come up with some emergency water solutions. And, you know, we’ve got some ponds. Sometimes those ponds get shallow during droughts, and, we’re trying to encourage farmers to fence those ponds off to discourage cattle from getting in.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 04:14
It it’s a kind of a catch-22 there. You know, it’s a way to release some heat stress on these cows that can get in and cool down. But when water’s becoming limiting and short, we also don’t want them contaminating the water. As they get in there, there’s a lot of total dissolved solids or or, like I like to say, sediment or mud that gets churned up, and the cattle don’t wanna drink that water. So if we can fence it out and improve the water quality and use something like this solar water pump to pump water out, then that can give us some emergency type situation.
Colt Knight: 04:48
That’s also a bad situation for, like, mastitis too, right, as waiting in that water.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 04:55
It is. The other thing that we don’t think about, which I’ve I’ve seen a lot, is also foot rot. You know, there’s usually some rocks and that in there, and that organism is a, a bacteria that lives in the absence of oxygen. So when you get mud packed in a hoof and that bacteria is there and it excludes oxygen, then a little bitty rock cut in between the toes or into that hoof wall may allow that bacteria to kind of start growing then. And now you’ve got a situation where you’ve got foot rot.
Colt Knight: 05:25
And on the non animal side, we’ve got the erosion issues with allowing the cattle or whatever species to to get directly into the pond.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 05:34
That’s a good point. You know, you have that, dam that can be deteriorated and you walk that down. You also have, sediment that comes in from maybe fields that are above, and those cattle then begin following that water down into the pond, and they begin causing more erosion, then you get more sediment coming into the ponds. So fencing the ponds out are are one of the things that we try to do and look for alternative solutions. The other thing is is that if something like this could be even used in streams and and, you know, decently flowing creeks and that, because it doesn’t have to be that deep.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 06:11
Mhmm. This pump is a low cost submersible well pump that you’ve seen it. What is it? Maybe 12 to 15 inches in-depth?
Colt Knight: 06:22
Yeah. It’s a cylinder that looks about a foot long and three or four inches wide.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 06:27
And it’s an an impeller type pump, and it’s got a protective screen around it to try and keep sediment out of it. Now I do like to take some some really low cost, either nylon or even some some kind of metal mesh screen. Typically, I take just window screening. That’s the nylon, and I’ll fold it over twice, wrap it around that pump, put some zip ties on it to try and give me a little more protection from algae and and other sediment that might try to get into that pump. But, yeah, it’s a low cost pump.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 06:58
It runs on 12 volt. It’s only a 30 watt power. And so we can actually run this pump off of a a 12 volt battery. And that’s the other beauty on this is it gives us some really rapid portable water solutions.
Colt Knight: 07:15
And the pump itself advertises that it will lift 230 feet.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 07:19
That is correct. It is advertised. We haven’t tested it. That’s one of the things that I do wanna do is I wanna test it now on this particular pump, because it is a relatively low cost pump. The the one limitation that I would say this pump has is it’s a half inch outflow, which restricts the water to about three and a half.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 07:41
I measured it just a little over three and a half. It’s advertised at 3.8 gallons per minute, but I’m getting closer to three and a half gallons per minute when I hook it up to garden hose.
Colt Knight: 07:51
And it might depend on how far you have to to pump that water, whether that’s gonna go three and a half or three or
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 07:58
Absolutely. The longer we go in that, the more resistance we have in that pipe, it’s gonna cause us to lose some pressure, and that’s gonna cause us to lose some flow.
Colt Knight: 08:10
And so you were just casually mentioning this project. It wasn’t any part of what I was doing down here in Kentucky. And I said, you know, that would interest a lot of the folks that I work with in Maine. We have a lot of homesteaders backyard producers, folks that have non developed land that they’re, they’re setting up on. So there’s no access to piped water or electricity.
Colt Knight: 08:36
Some of these older farms and homesteads might have, an old dug well. Some people use sand points to dig a shallow well. And if you had some groundwater with a dug well or a shallow well, this pump would easily sit down in there and you could create flowing water for your livestock.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 08:57
Absolutely. And the some of the older farmhouses that we have here also used to use cisterns. Right?
Colt Knight: 09:06
Mhmm.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 09:07
And so water was collected off of the roofs through gutters and would go down into the cisterns, and then you can pump that water back out. One of the challenges we have with that is contamination, but we actually have one of our ag engineers has been promoting pretty heavily on a modern cistern type approach. So they’re taking these poly tanks, you know, like an
Colt Knight: 09:30
IBC tote or something or a dedicated water tank.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 09:33
Right. It could be an IBC tote or even they’re going up to some larger concrete tanks that they’re bearing down next to the barn and then collecting roof, water. And then because it’s buried in the ground, it can give you a little bit of protection from freezing. And then you can use a solar pump like this to then pump that stored water out into livestock, water tanks. So these these water options are something that we look at and to be increasing our flexibility to get water out of a in a well, a creek, a cistern.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 10:11
These IBC totes are fantastic. I think it was Virginia that has a small trailer, you know, one of these small
Colt Knight: 10:21
Mhmm.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 10:21
Trailers you’ll see hauling lawnmowers and that up and down the road. They put three IBC totes on it, and they’ll pump out of a creek or a stream, and that gives them almost a thousand gallons of storage. Wow. Yep.
Colt Knight: 10:35
I believe they’re, what, two seventy five gallons on our IBC tote?
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 10:39
That that can vary, anywhere from 275. I’ve seen them as big as three twenty five, but I’d say you’re right. Most of them are gonna be two seventy five gallons. You wanna make sure you get one that’s had some food grade material in it so there’s no chemical residue concerns on that, And you can wash them out pretty quickly then. And and they make a nice, temporary water storage option.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 11:03
And if you put that on a small trailer, it can be a portable type system. We’re using a hundred watt solar panel on this. This solar pump runs a 30 watt, so I can’t run it off of a single solar panel, but that’s where I’m using a a marine deep cycle 12 volt battery.
Colt Knight: 11:21
Mhmm.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 11:22
And I’m simply using a, 100 watt solar panel to recharge the battery.
Colt Knight: 11:29
Yep. And that battery will go for about five hours running the pump.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 11:33
That’s correct. So what I what I did is, you know, I looked a little bit of on the kind of the math where we think about amps that are being used by that. That’s a 10 amp pump at a 30 watts, and and you can back calculate how many, you know, amp hours of storage you need to to power that. And the literature and and you would probably know this as good as I would, but I believe the literature would suggest that in a typical cool season grass system like we’re at here in Kentucky, cattle are gonna come drink about three to five times a day. So if you’ve got a cow that’s gonna consume 20 gallons a day, she’s gonna probably drink three to five gallons at any given time.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 12:20
And so I’ve done some math to try to figure out how many gallons do I need to pump in the nighttime if they’re coming to drink two to three times to make sure that we’ve got enough battery storage to
Colt Knight: 12:32
to get that And and, you know, the the key times are the first morning drink, the midday drink, and then the drink before they get ready to settle down for bed. So throughout the day, they might come in twos or threes if you’ve got enough water or small enough paddock. But But if they’re out in a big paddock and they’re roaming around as a herd, that that everybody might come at once, especially on those early morning drinks. And if you can’t keep up with the water, they’re like little children, and they’ll just destroy the water tank. That’s exactly right.
Colt Knight: 13:05
Upset if it’s empty.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 13:07
And that’s where I usually tell producers to think about this. If you push the pencil and look at the cost of tank for water storage in comparison to the cost to upgrade to, say, a 24 volt pump and the additional batteries just to link those in series or parallel and then also the solar panels, you’re by far better off to go with a much larger tank for holding capacity than you are to try to scale up to bigger pumps than that. So the other thing I I like about having a bigger water tank, and I know it’s maybe a little more wasteful if you’ve gotta clean them out, but it’s a safety reserve as well. The bigger tank storage you have, it’s more stored water.
Colt Knight: 13:51
Yep.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 13:52
So these these pumps are something that we’ve been playing around with, and and we’re gonna continue to play with them throughout the next year to two years because I think solar costs have come down. I mean, shoot. What are these these hundred watt panels are, you know, less than a hundred dollars now? Most of them, you can get the the controller. Really, I don’t particularly like the controllers that the there’s a controller that you need that steadies out the the power coming from the solar panel going to whatever you’re gonna power, whether it be charging the battery or whatever.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 14:25
So you got fluctuations from that solar panel and you need a controller to help level that out. But the the panels and a cheap controller are gonna run probably a hundred to hundred $20. Now if you move up to, like, an MPPT controller, you’re pushing maybe a hundred and 50 to something like that, but still not that expensive. That technology’s come down so much so in the last ten years. But, the other thing is is that float switches.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 14:56
I think you were kind of taken away by one example of a float switch that we were using. The afloat switch, which you pointed out, was a 20 volt power. Yep. And in order to do that, I have to have a linear power booster in the system. And so that’s there, and it will take that 12 volt power and convert it and push it up to the one twenty volt that I need on the float switch.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 15:20
And that way, I don’t have to worry about some of these, low lot of these floats we use in tanks, you’ve gotta have a certain amount of pressure for them to work. And so if I have a low flow volume that’s not pushing enough pressure, this electronic switch, which is basically what it was a sump pump.
Colt Knight: 15:38
It’s a sump pump. So the it and in Maine, we know this all too well because almost every basement in Maine is equipped with a sump pump because of the moisture and the, so that where you have your sump pump in your house, this is just an electronic switch that if your basement starts to flooding in that hole, as it floats up, the valve closes off and triggers the pump to start working.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 16:06
Yeah. And so this well, basically, we’ve taken that same principle and then actually using it. So that’s one of the limitations is I’ve I’m tethering my water tank to the power source with that electronic float switch so I can’t run long distances per se
Colt Knight: 16:24
Mhmm.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 16:24
Without a cord, and I’ve gotta protect that float switch. I’ve also seen where folks have used a bilge pump, a 12 volt bilge pump out of a boat, turned it upside down, and that’s another way to try to control that. They’re they’re not gonna last probably as long as this type of switch, but it’s just another option that folks would have or something like that.
Colt Knight: 16:46
Yep.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 16:48
So, we’re we’re gonna build another one here soon. A producer wants to use some of the the tire tanks, and, we’re gonna have to get a pump that’s probably three times the size of this one to push the water where we need to and the volume of water that we’re gonna have to push on that. But, I think I can still do that system for probably less than $1,500, because that’s gonna be a 370 watt pump. And, you know, with cloudy days like we’ve had today, you’re not gonna maximize your output from solar panels. So you, you know, you’re probably gonna have to have 600 watts or so of solar panel power.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 17:28
He does not want a battery backup. He’s gonna actually put this on a pond and float it. And so he wants the solar panels and everything to be out there on the pond. And I just need to make sure that we’re pushing enough power to keep that pump able to push up. He wants to go a hundred feet incline and then gravity flow from one tank to the next tank to the next tank.
Colt Knight: 17:49
Yep. And just so that the listeners can get kind of a visual of this. Imagine a single solar panel that’s about two foot wide by three foot tall. Jeff has just built a little two by four table that that sits on attached either underneath or to the side of it is the, the, the power converter that takes that dirty solar power and evens out the 12 voltage.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 18:14
Yep.
Colt Knight: 18:15
And then that goes to another transformer, which upgrades the power to 120 volts to control the switch. And then so that wire so there’s two wires going off of the, controller switches. One set goes to the battery backup, which can store five hours worth of, of power for that pump. And then the other wire goes to the tank and controls the pump and the float valve.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 18:44
That’s right.
Colt Knight: 18:44
And that float valve is just a foot long piece that, that you can set to whatever height you want in that tank. And then from there, you can run your hose from the pump and the pump, the way you have it set up as you’ve just got a four inch PVC pipe in a square that serves as a float.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 19:06
Yep.
Colt Knight: 19:06
Kind of like a floating pool noodle.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 19:08
Exactly.
Colt Knight: 19:09
And it’s hung with a plastic chain so that you can suspend it in the water 18 inches below the surface. So it keeps the water cool. So you’re not pumping out that that top hot air.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 19:20
That’s right.
Colt Knight: 19:20
But if you wanted to, you could put that in a dug well, a sand point. Well, yeah, anywhere that you had water, you could put that pump. And so that smaller setup you said is about $500
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 19:34
That’s right. It does not include the water tank itself. But for that full system, it’s about $500. I was looking for materials that we could get readily, and so I went to Amazon of all places. But that’s what I wanted to do to be able to give producers the total list and I’ll be honest.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 20:04
I’m a little tight on some of these things. So for the cordage for the float switch, you know, I just went and bought an extension cord, 50 foot extension cord, cut it off, and and tethered it to the float switch to give me enough distance from the tank to the solar panel that I could keep cattle away from the dam and also give me an opportunity to level the tank out because sometimes we can’t level it out on the dam. It’s too narrow. So, I tried to go really inexpensive components on it. You probably like my little bitty plastic dish that I got from the dollar store to to protect the controller panels and my black tape around it.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 20:42
We’re we’re gonna move up to a little bit better boxing in that, as we move to more permanent situations. But, you can do these things low cost. The unfortunate thing, the battery was about a hundred $50. So that’s You need
Colt Knight: 20:57
a you need a deep cycle marine battery for the constant recharging and discharge.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 21:02
Yeah. And I would like to go to lithium. Lithium would be a lot better. And and you want about a thousand amp hours in storage. You know, you can even size that depending on the number ahead that you have drinking out of the tank.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 21:15
But this was on a seventy, seventy cow operation, 70 mama cows in the middle of the summer, and I had done some rough math to figure out that I needed about a thousand amp hours worth of storage to run it. So I’d love to go back to the to lithium battery, but I’m probably pushing $2.50 for a lift you know, $250 or so for lithium battery of that size.
Colt Knight: 21:40
And so by the time that this podcast airs, you will have a nice little fact sheet, kinda like a how to and where to source things, and we will include that in the link. And then the other thing that we did at this field day that really impressed me was, I forgot the gentleman’s name that gave the presentation, was talking about the different stakes, fence post, and stuff to use with portable electric polywire.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 22:07
Doctor Matt Poor from my our colleague from North Carolina State has, they received a grant a few years ago from, from SARE for train to trainer programs, and they put together these nice grazing kits to demonstrate temporary electric fencing and troubleshooting workshops. And, we’ve done that in the past as well. I love getting these different fence posts out from from poly type plastic posts to the rebar put on a insulator type post to the fiberglass posts because I think producers need to get an idea of what they’re buying and what they’re paying, or what they’re getting when they buy something that’s $3 for a post versus, say, $5 for a post. And I thought doctor Poore did a great job of of kind of putting it in this very easy to think about situation. You want a tread in post if you’re if you’re using tread ins.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 23:08
You want a tread in post that has a wide place for you to put your foot on and a relatively small metal, shaft that you’re gonna push into the ground, particularly in Maine where you’re gonna get maybe ground that freezes a little early.
Colt Knight: 23:21
A lot of rocks.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 23:23
And a lot of rocks.
Colt Knight: 23:24
A lot of rocks.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 23:25
And so the other thing is is we know that there are differences in UV stability in plastics. And some of these cheaper plastic posts are made out of plastics that will deteriorate maybe a little faster. They may last three to five years, whereas some posts may last ten, fifteen, twenty years. It was interesting. They actually say that the the some of the black plastic is more UV stable than, say, white or orange.
Colt Knight: 23:55
Mhmm. Well and that that you know, even with your zip ties, your outdoor rated zip ties are usually black compared to the the white indoor or the semi clear indoor rated zip ties because of that.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 24:06
Yeah. And so you would think it’s the other way around. Right? Because black is always gonna, you know, collect more soap radiation.
Colt Knight: 24:12
When you think of PVC electrical conduit, right, the stuff that we put inside or under the ground is white, and the electrical stuff that we put outside is in conduit, that’s gray.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 24:24
Right.
Colt Knight: 24:24
Right? Because it’s weather resistant.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 24:27
Yeah. So he he showed a lot of the different types of posts there. And, you know, we have even some more in our kits that we’ve shown. But it gives you the option to see if you’re dealing with multispecies. Sheep and pigs are gonna need maybe a little different fencing, say, than what beef cattle are.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 24:48
And so
Colt Knight: 24:48
Most of your beef steaks are designed for one strand at a certain height, which the sheep could walk right under. The pigs could walk right under. And so some of those are designed with multiple strands abilities and the ability to put strands at different heights.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 25:06
Exactly. And some of these posts are gonna be fiberglass. And one thing about fiberglass, we know the coating material on them can differ. And as you and I were talking, you know, there’s nothing like taking and grabbing a hold of a fiberglass post that’s been weathered and getting shards of fiberglass in your hand. Yeah.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 25:31
That’s the worst. And so you’re spending the next few hours trying to pick out all those fiberglass shards. But you can you can find better fiberglass posts out there now. Try to protect them from when you’re trying to pound those in. You want you can wanna try to eliminate using a steel hammer on them.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 25:53
Use a rubber mallet if you have to, and they also make these protective caps that you put on top of them before you beat them down in the ground or like doctor Poore said, he said for some of these, a, an empty 30 odd 6 casing fits just about perfectly.
Colt Knight: 26:08
If you cut the bottleneck part off.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 26:10
Exactly. Cut that bottleneck part off. So there are some things that you can use to, to to give you a way to protect from causing that splintering at the very top of the shaft where you’re pounding it in the ground. A friend of mine actually uses some that have kind of a black, plastic knob on the top that makes it easier where it fits in the Palm of your hand to push down in. And that works pretty well.
Colt Knight: 26:37
And if you’re intending on doing a lot of rotational grazing or strip grazing, you end up moving those stakes a lot. And, you know, your physical health is something to consider. It’s like if if it’s something that’s ergonomic to use when you’re trying stuff out and you do it once, twice, three times, it’s not a big deal. You can manhandle anything into the ground if you’re but if you’re doing a hundred a day, twice a day over the entire grazing season, you can get some some real issues working with some of those products that you wouldn’t get with the nice the the properly designed products.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 27:16
That’s that’s right. And, you know, think about if you’re moving that frequently, like you said, and I’m going a long stretch and I’ve got, you know, 2,000 feet of polywire or or, you know, temporary fencing out there. Do you want a geared reel that’s three to one ratio that for every time you spin it around, it’s pulling in three times the amount of polywire? Or do you want a non geared one because you’re saving $50.60 bucks on it, but you gotta reel that thing so much more to get that in? So the other thing to think about is, you know, we we don’t think about it much as what type of fencing should you use and that’s something we can get into.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 27:55
But polywire versus braid versus tape.
Colt Knight: 27:59
Versus the netting. Versus netting. Yep. Yep. And so I think to start that discussion off, if we just think of a single strand of polywire, we’re we’re just gonna put, like, a one strand polywire fence up.
Colt Knight: 28:16
Do we want the the round cord, or do we want the tape?
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 28:22
Good good question. And so within both tape and let’s call it, the polywire, they’re different forms. There are some that maybe only have six strands of metal in them and some that may have nine. And so I always say go with the better products that have more strands because it’s gonna stretch and you’re gonna break a few. If I have six and I break three, I only have three electrified.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 28:52
If I have nine and I break three, then I have six that are still carrying current. So do that. And then also, the tapes have greater resistance, so you’re going to lose more current with a a tape than you will with a polywire.
Colt Knight: 29:12
Yeah. So generally speaking, I think the horse people prefer the tape because it’s more visual to the, to the horses. But on the livestock side, you want the more current flowing through there to keep the animals in. So I I think even with pigs, sheep, goats, well, pigs and cattle and sheep and goats and things you want the wire type instead of the tape.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 29:41
Yeah. I think part of that coat, as we think about it, it has to do with, the acreage needed for cattle say versus swine and sheep and and horses. And so if if I’m dealing with a smaller paddock or smaller farm area, tape is something that works very well. If I’m dealing with a larger beef cattle herd and I’ve got to fence in, you know, acres to be able to move at a time, then the poly braid is something that I really like. And I like the braided product.
Colt Knight: 30:12
Over the twisted product.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 30:13
That yes. It it is a little more durable long term. It’s thicker. It’s easier to see. You know, one of the things we were talking about when we were standing there because there was a nice woods right there close was the issue of deer getting tangled up in it.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 30:29
So the more visual it can be even to deer, the less risk you have of them getting into the fence and tearing it down. So I think the braid is a little more visual as well because it’s usually a little thicker.
Colt Knight: 30:41
When when I grew up in West Virginia and we would we fenced the woods off a lot and it, there was no flat ground where I grew up. So it was all hollers, hills and things. And if you put that poly wire through the woods on a, on a slope, the deer would run down the Hill and run into it. And then, of course, it would shock them and scare them, but they would just keep running downhill. And they would just rip that tape off the insulator and drag it all the way down to the creek.
Colt Knight: 31:07
And so I never liked using that stuff when it wasn’t in a a more open situation where it was more visible to the animals.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 31:14
Yeah. I think that’s key is it needs to be visible. And the more visibility you get, the better. So, yeah, so with horses, you know, the the wider tapes are usually preferred. You know, the they are more visual to them.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 31:27
There’s more surface area then too to connect with the animal and provide that cue that, hey. You’re you’re coming to the fence. And then and then a lot of the horse areas, it’s a small runout. Right? So it’s a, you know, a couple acre acre runout, and you’re not pushing forty, sixty acres.
Colt Knight: 31:47
Mhmm.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 31:48
So they those work fine in those types of situations. The other thing is the you mentioned the multi strand, netting. So those nets, typically, you’re not gonna have a very big area with them because they run a pretty high resistance. And so, you you lose current through those.
Colt Knight: 32:06
But the netting is preferred on our species like pasture poultry, sheep, goats to keep them in better. Goats are hard to keep in anything. So you’re not gonna keep those in a one strand hot wire. Sheep, you can keep those in a few strands of of poly wire. But the added benefit that we get from that netting is the predator
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 32:29
Exactly.
Colt Knight: 32:30
Resistance.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 32:31
That’s exactly right. We’re not thinking so much about fencing in as we are fencing out when it comes to those species.
Colt Knight: 32:37
Yeah. But with that poly netting, you get grounding issues. Right? Yeah. Because it’s sitting right on the ground.
Colt Knight: 32:46
There’s a lot of strands that the grass can grow up into. So it’s way more difficult to strip graze with that netting than it is the wire where you can keep it above the grass. You’re gonna have to run your your mower or brush hog around the perimeter of that fence to make sure that it it doesn’t ground out.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 33:05
That’s a good point, especially when you have, you know, a lot of grass and and you get a lot of heavy dews that’s gonna push grass down on the fence. The other thing is that, when I was up north, we had a lot of producers that once they figured out where they wanted their subdivisions and pastures using temporary fencing, they on the dairy side, they quickly moved to a single strand high tensile. Yeah. And and made them more permanent pastures, if you will. But we are dealing with, you know, temporary fencing here to give you the maximum flexibility of setting up paddocks and subdividing, learning maybe where you want a water to be, and maybe you thought it should go here and then realize, well, that’s gonna be a problem because there’s maybe a little bit of a swell and and the water’s kinda flowing down into a creek and so you gotta move it up.
Colt Knight: 33:59
Mhmm.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 34:01
The other thing is to think about these is visibility. There are a lot of different colors out there, and you want something that will contrast with the background as much as possible. We have actually done demo demonstrations where we’ve taken some of the the materials that are darker in color and tied them into pieces that are lighter in color that give more contrast. And, typically, what we found is that the livestock will push through the darker area because it doesn’t contrast as well. So if you can think about maximizing that color contrast against the grass in the background, it’s, it’ll prevent them from pushing them straight through it because they can see that contrast.
Colt Knight: 34:46
Yeah. And so once we figure out what type of fence we want to use, what kind of stakes we want to use to move it around, how do we energize that properly so that it stays hot enough to to give the animals some cue to stay away from it. And I think there’s there’s two things to consider. One is your charger and the other is the proper grounding. Right?
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 35:07
That is true. You know, you can go spend as much money as you want on a on a fence charger. And if you don’t properly ground it, you’re never gonna get your money’s worth out of it.
Colt Knight: 35:18
And what are the general guidelines for selecting a charger, either solar or plugged in?
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 35:27
So I think first, that’s that’s where you start. I think, Colt, that’s the perfect place to start. What’s gonna be the power source? You will get more jewels, which is basically more power cheaper for one that you can plug into an electrical outlet in the barn than you will for solar or battery. So there’s really three choices.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 35:49
There’s there’s the plug in. So, you know, one ten volt or one twenty volt. There’s your battery, and then there’s solar. And then there’s a combination, and and we’ve seen one today at the field day. Right?
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 36:03
So it had both the ability to run off of a battery in the event that you lose power and you need to electrify the fence, but it will also plug directly into, an outlet. I’ve used and I’ve really liked these where we’ve taken a deep cycle marine battery and a little larger solar panel and hook that up to one of the larger chargers that are made for batteries. I prefer those over the older gel type battery chargers that the the batteries just didn’t last long.
Colt Knight: 36:41
Mhmm.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 36:41
Now with lithium batteries, they’ve gotten a lot better. And and so I think that that technology has just come along, and the the issue is buy more power than you think you’re gonna need.
Colt Knight: 36:55
Well, yeah. Because when you go to buy those chargers, it says, this charger is rated for 30 miles of fence. And I have never seen a fence charger rated for 30 miles of fence that would come anywhere close to energizing 30 miles of fence. They might energize a mile or so of fence.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 37:12
And there’s there’s no standard measurement on power on these chargers either. And part of it is is, you know, they’re made and they’re manufactured in different company or countries. And so that can vary. So when you look at what you need, I thought doctor Port did a good job of summarizing it today too, and it’s typically you think about, one joule for every 10 acres. And a lot of these solar, smaller solar chargers may be one and a half joule.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 37:44
And so, you know, if if you’re dealing with a lot lot larger pasture, you’re gonna have to step up maybe to a a four joule. And so four joule then at 10 acres is gonna be a 40 acre field. And, that’s a pretty good general rule of thumb. You just wanna be careful on making sure that you get a good ground on that. You mentioned making sure that we ground it well.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 38:09
One of the biggest things I see farmers messing up on that is when they’re thinking about these solar chargers and temporary fencing, they wanna throw one ground rod in. And the general recommendation is what? Three. And eight foot deep. Right?
Colt Knight: 38:25
Eight foot deep, 10 foot apart, three ground rods.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 38:31
Yeah. And so you’re we often will walk in there, and there’ll be a ground going to a t post that’s down 12 inches in the ground.
Colt Knight: 38:40
And that t post is cast iron, and it does not conduct. And painted. Right? Yeah. It’s painted.
Colt Knight: 38:46
It’s not gonna conduct anywhere near, like, what copper would. Even the galvanized ground rods actually can be better than the copper Exactly. Because the copper will corrode outside and the, and the galvanized won’t. So with the, if it’s not corroded, the copper works better than the galvanized, but in the real world, once that copper starts corroding, the galvanized works better.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 39:09
It’s
Colt Knight: 39:09
right. We have on in some of our research studies, when we were moving those fences and chargers often, and we, we, if we pounded a, a stake in the ground eight foot, it would, it was not coming up. So, we have actually taken those 16 foot cattle panels and feedlot panels and laid those flat on the ground and use those for, for grounding.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 39:33
Exactly. And they work really well. And that’s another good strategy. You mentioned rock and and, you know, nobody knows it. Mhmm.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 39:41
Nobody has rock. But that’s another good strategy to ground because if you dig down and you can’t go deep, then you need to go horizontal with your ground. And you can run your ground rods horizontally. But the issue issue that you’ll run into in shallow grounding is that you need moist soil for grounding. Yep.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 39:59
If it’s not deep enough to get good moisture and that top 10 inches dries out, then you’re gonna lose that grounding ability.
Colt Knight: 40:06
And even in a drought situation, if you’ve got those ground rods pounded into the ground, if it’s if it’s dry all the way down, it’s hard to even get those to complete the circuit.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 40:17
Exactly. So when you think about power chargers, think about source of power and then kick up the jewels as much as you can afford or or what you need and, to to energize that system that you’re gonna be pushing. And then think about, trying to go a little bit bigger than what you think you need. Because at some point in time, you’re always gonna expand it or you’re gonna have some issues where you don’t get out there in time and you’re gonna have a heavy weed load and you’re gonna have more grounding than what you thought. So going bigger is always better when picking up energizer.
Colt Knight: 40:51
Yeah. So when we do in temporary fencing, we wanna pick the right wire for the right situation. We don’t wanna cheap out on the wire because it’s false economy in the long run. We wanna pick those stakes that are both ergonomic to use and durable, and so it needs a wide foot panel that won’t break off and a smaller metal pike on the bottom. We want to use geared reels so that it saves us some cranking, and we wanna use proper grounding.
Colt Knight: 41:29
And then the one thing that we didn’t talk about, and I’d like to get your opinion on this, is what is your favorite type of gate to use in a temporary system?
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 41:37
Oh, so I think I think that varies, and and you’re gonna talk to to people that have different opinions on those. I do I like the spring gates. The well designed spring gates are pretty handy. I have I have thought about this. There are some tools out there.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 42:03
For example, there are some timers that you can put a spring spring gate handle on, and, you can program this timer to release that gate to open it up for livestock to move into the next paddock or field. And so that’s one of the reasons that I like spring gates is is to be able to use a piece of technology like that. I have used about everything, and, I think they all have their place. And so I don’t really have a preference on gates. I I’ve even used the netting as a gate.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 42:38
Mhmm. And the reason I’ve used that or particularly when I’m training livestock because I want them to know when when I open that that they’re able to move. And once they see that in my in a training pen, then when they see me coming in and and I move and I start moving that gate open, they know it’s time to move. And so that can be a good way to get cattle just and and other livestock trained to the it’s time to move.
Colt Knight: 43:11
And I work a lot with pigs. And one of the things that I like to do with pigs is set up a different visual cue for the gate than the fence itself.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 43:20
Good point.
Colt Knight: 43:21
Because the pigs become so adverse to the electric fence, they won’t even go through the open gate if they think it’s still electrified. And so when you’re trying to rotate your pigs or load your pigs or anything, if you just put them in a straight strand fence and use that as your kinda your gate too, when you do open that, they do not trust you that walking through that hole will not zap them and they will not walk through that hole. It can be a real nightmare to get pigs to walk through
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 43:53
That’s true.
Colt Knight: 43:53
Through electric fence if you haven’t trained them that that that the gate is a safe space.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 43:58
So a good example of that might be where I use just a single strand of bare wire in front of a metal gate.
Colt Knight: 44:06
That’s what I do at the house for my my pigs. And then
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 44:09
you open that metal gate up and they see the gap and that that wire then has moved and they see that metal gate open and they say, okay. I can go out there now.
Colt Knight: 44:17
Yep.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 44:18
Yep. So I think that’s a really good point, and we just need to recognize the behavior of animals and what we’re trying to train them to. And so we can I can get a a group of of cattle trained electric temporary electric fencing in about four or five days? And I start out with tape so it’s more visual, and I I take a corner of the of the pin off, a receiving pin. I’ll take a corner of it off.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 44:44
Then I’ll split it to where I’m going to the water, and the cattle then, if they wanna get access to water, they’ll walk along that line to get to the water. So you can get cattle trained electric fence that have never been around it pretty quickly, and and other species will do that too. But the key on that is making sure and doctor Poore made this comment today, You know, make sure that it stays at their proper voltage that’s high enough that they learn to respect it. One of the things that I was really frustrated with a partner of mine is we would have the poly post in. And because of shortness of time, he would take down the wire, but leave the posts.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 45:26
Well, now you’ve given the animal a learned behavior of walking in between posts that are there. So why would they respect polywire there?
Colt Knight: 45:36
You’re giving them conflicting cues.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 45:38
Yes. So take take the time to take all the posts down if you’re gonna pull the fence up.
Colt Knight: 45:46
Mhmm.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 45:46
Don’t confuse them.
Colt Knight: 45:47
Yep. And let’s say that you’re using a field. You’re rotating through a field like strip grazing year to year or multiple times through the year. Do you keep the same quadrants, or do
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 46:00
you change the direction from vertical to horizontal from year to year? Good question. And I typically will work with the landscape. And so, often, we’re on we’re running on contours on steeper hills, and so I’ll keep that same, contour. But I like the temporary fencing because I can move it and eliminate laning, which will eliminate soil erosion.
Colt Knight: 46:25
Mhmm.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 46:26
So I do move them from that perspective, but I typically will stay the same pattern along the contour. Cattle don’t necessarily like to go up steep hills, but if I can contour strip and keep them at about the same elevation and and same steepness across it, they’ll move across that pretty well. The big thing on steep hills is remember that livestock gotta have a relatively flat place to lay down. Mhmm. And so you need to make sure that they’ve got an accessible area that’s somewhat flat to lay.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 46:59
Otherwise, you may see them lay on the wrong side and they get you know, they’ll end up getting bloated and and you’ll see some death losses. One thing we didn’t really touch about that I think almost everybody that moves in electric fencing should have in their toolbox is one of these, smart fence testers. And I don’t know smart is the right name, but they’re fault finding fence testers. And so they’re more expensive. You’re gonna spend over a hundred dollars for most of these.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 47:29
But the value of them is to quickly find a short or a place where the fence is getting grounded out, and it will give you directions of which way to go to try and find these faults. And it will save you more time than you’ll realize, and you’ll save more steps than you realize, and it can be your best friend.
Colt Knight: 47:50
And there’s also energizers that you can buy that have, like, a like, almost a remote with them that you can keep in your pocket or your side by side or or whatnot, and you can turn the fence on and off so that you can cross over. And and that saves you a ton of going back and forth.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 48:07
That’s right. And and so you’ve got that remote and particularly when you’re finding areas that need fixed. So you find it, and then you can shut that fence off there, get it fixed, and then turn it back on and test it again to see if that’s taking taking care of your fault or your grounding area. So, yeah, there’s a lot of tools out there in technology. I think the industry is actually moving back away from some of the really high level technology because it added a lot of cost, and, they didn’t see people wanting to go to wifi connectivity and some of those things with it.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 48:42
That technology is out there, but they’ve they’ve actually began to kind of pull that back down.
Colt Knight: 48:47
And one of the things that we talked about on one of our previous podcasts, was this is with doctor Derek Bailey. We talked about stockmanship, and we don’t wanna lose stockmanship to technology.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 49:01
No. That’s a really good point.
Colt Knight: 49:03
Because the technology isn’t gonna see when the animals are sick. They’re not gonna see when the grass is overgrazed. Actually being out there with the animals and still practicing that good stockmanship, we shouldn’t try to eliminate that with technology. We should we should use technology to supplement our stockmanship, not eliminate our stockmanship.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 49:27
Very good point. That that is absolutely the truth. And the other thing that we forget about is, like and as an example, you know, checking on cattle with drones, that that’s fine. But if they’ve never seen a human walking into a pasture and they’ve only seen something ahead overhead, when you need to go out and help that animal, they may see you as a predator, but and they’re not used to seeing somebody walking into the field, and so they respond maybe a little more defensively than what they normally would.
Colt Knight: 49:58
I think drones are great technology to find cattle. Yeah.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 50:02
You know,
Colt Knight: 50:02
if you got a two acre pasture, it’s not a big deal. If you got a 70,000 acre pasture, then it becomes a a big deal.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 50:09
Exactly.
Colt Knight: 50:11
But, again, we use technology to supplement stockmanship, not replace it. Doctor. Lemkeler, this has been a fantastic discussion. And I would like to remind our listeners that we would love to hear from you. If you have comments, suggestions, or suggested episodes, please send us an email at extension.farmcast@maine.edu.
Colt Knight: 50:36
And if you would like to see a grazing school take place out in the field where we can demonstrate some of these different states, fences, waterers, and all that technology, please send us an email, and maybe we could make that happen in the spring or summer of twenty twenty five.
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 50:58
Doctor Knight, thanks for bringing me onto the podcast again, and, I look forward to visiting with your folks in the near future.
Colt Knight: 51:06
Dr. Lehmkuhler just wants more
Jeff Lehmkuhler: 51:08
lobster. I’m not gonna lie. I do love your lobster.
Colt Knight: 51:13
Alright. Thanks for listening.
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