Owner of Jimenbuen Pastoral Company, Dalgety, NSW, Jack Glasson is a fourth generation Aussie farmer who is seeing a huge difference in his bottom line after taking the plunge into Clipex exclusion fencing.
Running primarily a fine wool Merino operation of 14,500 sheep, Mr Glasson returned to the family farm six years ago and since being back has seen wild dog numbers on the rise.
He began looking into fencing in November 2016 when nothing else seemed to keep the dogs at bay.
“We lost 498 weathers in just over a year and a half; that’s a huge number that we couldn’t sustain,” he said.
“When we were looking for a way to stop the dogs, fencing came out to be the best solution and we said if we are doing one fence why not make it to exclude all animals which we really don’t want on the place.”
Mr Glasson has now put up 32km of Clipex exclusion fencing.
“We purchased our first lot of Clipex fencing in December 2016 which we installed in a small 2km trial, we liked how it turned out so we bought another 30km.”
He invested in a 1.8m high fence with 2mm Blackmax barb on top and 1.8mm Maxlife barb below it using Clipex’s tuffknot wire with an apron running along the ground.
“Since erecting the fence around paddocks we were lambing in, we saw close to a 23 per cent improvement in lambing rates to ewes of similar age which were scanned at the same time but in paddocks which weren’t fenced with Clipex.
“We saw an instant result that was far better just through putting up the fence in the first year.”
And that’s not the only results he’s seen the fence produce.
“We’ve only lost six sheep since we put the fence up, which is a massive result.
“Our sheep are much more settled, they’re sitting on the camp a lot more and are more relaxed.
“We were getting problems with tender wool because of having stressed animals before, but since putting the fence up we haven’t had nearly as many problems with that.
“We also had a great shearing with quite a lot more wool produced which I think the fence was major factor in.”
Mr Glasson believes the investment has been worthwhile and better than expected.
“For the cost of the fence, my wife and I sat down and ran through the numbers. We looked at it quite closely and we thought it would take close to seven years to fully pay it off.
“We have now revised that in the last 12 months now that we have most of the fence up, and we think it will be closer to three years that we will start seeing positive income from it.
“I think a lot of people are very nervous about it because it is a massive investment, but the best thing to do is have a look at an exclusion fence. I was quite hesitant until I saw how good they were.
- Visit Clipex at Site’s L/14 and K/14-16 and phone 1800 65 77 66.
