G McTaggart, Hunter Valley

I have been impressed with your fence droppers for decades. Where I live, in the Hunter Valley, the most popular cattle fence for roads and boundaries and possibly internal fences is a five, high tensile, wire fence.

Most are five barbed wires through wooden posts spaced ten to sixteen metres apart with two to three droppers in between. The wire spacing is usually equally spaced and about 92 to 96cm from top to bottom wire.

This semi suspension design has proven to me to be able to withstand more pressure than any fence that has been tied at every post. The reason is, it takes advantage of the elasticity of the full length of the strain and with the droppers it spreads the load over the five wires.

The design of going through the wooden (or concrete) posts combined with the droppers prevents all size cattle from going through the fence. With five wires, the bottom wire is low enough to stop calves from going under, while allowing wallabies to go under without breaking or over stretching the bottom wire.

If you have stock bred from "the cow that jumped over the moon" there is not a standard fence that will stop them. If they are jumpers and don't quite clear the top wire, the elasticity of the wires is usually enough to prevent them from breaking the fence.