BY DAN CRUMMETT
Alan Newport has been moving cattle around in paddocks and studying intensive grazing management for more than 20 years, so it’s no wonder he got tired of running back and forth to the shop for fence posts, getting tangled up in unorganized rolls of polywire, and — in general — dreading putting up temporary fence.
Last winter, the editor of Beef Producer (www.BeefProducer.com) spent some time thinking about what he needed on fence-building trips, and then went to work with a welder to organize his efforts on the front of his four-wheeler. The result was a pilot model of the PolyFence Wizard, now being built and marketed by fabricator Rick Moberly of Ponca City, Okla.
The Wizard consists of an angle-iron frame which forms a tray in front of the all-terrain vehicle, or ATV, handlebars, with an expanded metal bottom and tubing mounts for commercial or aftermarket wire spools. In addition, there’s room in the racks in front of the tray for 52 tread-in posts. All the supplies are within easy reach of the driver.
In use, the operator sets the first post and attaches the polywire from the dispensing spool and then drives to the point where a fence post is needed. The post can be placed against the ground and driven in with the driver’s left foot (driver not leaving the ATV) and the wire attached to the post. The process continues to the end of the fence run. For taking up the polywire when it’s time to move paddocks, the operator uses a cordless drill motor on the take-up spool to reel in the wire in a matter of seconds or minutes.
Alan has used the rig this fall with a “mob-grazing” experiment on his place in northern Oklahoma and says it’s taken a lot of the frustration out of stringing wire.
For more information on the PolyFence Wizard, visit www.wendrick
tools.com, or call 620-222-4708.
“Imagine building fence while sitting down! Lots of interest in the Dakotas building smaller paddocks, too.” — Lon Tonneson, Dakota Farmer
“The spool Wizard deal is awesome. I grew up messing with electric fences and trying to wind them up when we moved from field to field — we were ahead of our time, grazing dairy cattle on 5-acre fields at a time.” — Tom Bechman, Indiana Prairie Farmer
“I’d think there’d be a lot of interest in the PolyFence Wizard, with producers trying to make the most of land and resources.” — Richard Davis, Carolina-Virginia Farmer
This article published in the February, 2012 edition of THE FARMER-STOCKMAN.
All rights reserved. Copyright Farm Progress Cos. 2012.
