Fencing vs. Very Large Herbivores

I have moose, lots and lots of moose in my neighborhood. I have a friend who has horses and uses a flat white strip of electrical fencing to keep her horses in, since I have no faith that any plant on Earth will keep moose from eating my vegetables I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for keeping my veggies safe. Moose have a long reach so netting won't work except for the birds. Just regular fencing they'll probably trample right over. I don't particularly want a porticullis around my peas so a heavy duty fence around just my garden doesn't seem asthetic enough...I might go for the sharpened stakes though....

I'm trying an electric wire around my garden for much smaller herbivores (rabbits). If your garden is convenient to electricity then an electric fence is relatively inexpensive. It can control goats, pigs, deer and even aggressive cattle, so it would be worth a shot for moose.

Maybe you could get a promotional discount from a retailer in return for a testimonial of the effectiveness in controlling moose invasion. One internet retailer is http://electric-deer-fence.com/index.htm

David

David, Please let me know how it works out between you and the rabbits! Thanks

I don't have moose but my great dane is moose enough. She trampled my 3 foot fencing and dug up everything in my garden. My artichoke was on its second year, getting ready to fruit. I could cry. We are going to use a lattice structure. The sheets at HomeDepot are about $18 and the connectors, about $8. I won't have anything over the top, but our fence will be about 4.5 feet high.

Grammy/Growingup,

I don't know about the rabbits, yet, but so far the lettuce, onions, and broccoli are untouched. The 90+ heat yesterday did stress the transplanted broccoli, but nothing is eating it yet.

I can guarantee that the fence is effective for the dogs. I have a brother and sister mixed-breed that are substantially Lab and fairly short haired. They are about 60 pounds, so not really big. However, the female already won't come within 20 feet of the garden. The boy will come a little closer, but he isn't quite as smart as she is...I think it only took one "bite" from the fence to convence her that it was a bad idea.

I'll post a photo of the wire and the charger when I can.

David

David

I don't know about moose, but a deer ran through my mom's 5 foot high wrought iron fence! Bent the fence, and probably skinned the deer's hide prettty good. Hope the electric wire works for you, because wrought iron isn't much to keep large herbivores from eating tender buds. Good luck!

dreaves,
If your dogs are anything like mine, you can now just put up a single wire fence around any spot where you don't want them - no connection to the charger needed. If they challenge it - make it hot for a couple of days.

Here's the promised photo of the fence. It wouldn't control a moose, but has done a great job with the family dogs. I'm hoping that it will help with rabbits, too. The first photo is of the main garden area.

This is a photo of the fence controller. It uses D-cell batteries which are supposed to last for 2-3 months. The controller came in a kit with a small spool of wire and some PVC posts. I bought a larger spool of wire and some insulators to use with standard T-Posts. You can see both the PVC posts and the T-posts in the photo above. I bought the kit and the extras at the local Tractor Supply.

David

That's a big garden.

Tractor Supply is great for such supplies. Northern Tool has a good selection, too.

This message was edited Mar 7, 2008 9:11 AM

I haven't used electric fencing but I bet it would work. The moose don't jump my chain link fence which is only about 4' high, so maybe the netting or some other cheap barrier would work. The moose will only work as hard as they are hungry. This early spring they pulled up the netting around my mugho pine and chomped all the tender green ends. About when your veggies are coming in, they are usually out in the woods on natural browse, but do "make the rounds" out of the blue so you have to have something.

When living in Maine, we used to have deer by the dozen and yes, the occasional moose.

My father would post stakes/poles at about 5'-6' in height at the corners of the garden. If it was one of the larger gardens we had, he would also put one or two stakes/poles in the middle. On each one was a bit of string with a clothespin at the top.

At the end of the day, after covering our shirts and handkerchiefs (and headbands) with sweat, we would clip the filthy shirt/hankie/headband to the stake/pole, and take down the one from the previous day so that we could put that one in the wash. If there wasn't THAT much sweat, we would change it out on the second day. Sometimes, but not often, we would pin up pants (that was hilarious, I must admit).

Because we had the human scent on all four corners, the deer/moose were always 'downwind' of the clothes. And, because there was occasional movement, not to mention the stink of the people, we could grow lovely vegetables without them being bothered by the local herbivores.

Perhaps this might help?