To contain sheep and short legged goats such as Boer goats a 120cm (1200mm) high mesh fence is used.

The mesh itself is prefabricated and is described as follows 8/90/30:

• 8 – the number of horizontal wires, in this example 8
• 90 – height of mesh in centimeters(cm), here 90cm or 900mm
• 30 – picket spacing, the spacing between the vertical wires in cm, here 30cm or 300mm

The other important criteria for your mesh is the thickness or gauge of the wire used to make it. Most mesh is made from 2mm or 2.5mm gauge wire and .5mm might not sound as much but its actually 25% stronger and will also last a lot longer. Since all livestock like to use the fence to scratch themselves the extra strength is really important.

When discuss with you your fencing requirements we discuss in more depth the right mesh for your situation but a few general points to consider are:

• the more wire in the mesh the more expensive it will be
• is there a treat of wild dogs
• do you have goats with horns that can get stuck in the fence
• does the fence need to contain other animals, eg dogs,horses, chickens etc.
• corrosion protection: gal, heavy gal and blue long life coating

Lets now say that we have established what the right mesh, being 8/90/30 Stock Safe. The way we build a fence for mesh is that we install the end assemblies and posts and run 3 line wires for the mesh, so in this case at 5cm, 45cm and 90cm and clip the mesh to these wires and we tension it to the manufactures specifications and than we run a top wire at 120cm which can be plain or barb. For 70cm high mesh we would run to line wires above it.