Floating Fence Takes Headache Out Of Spring Flooding

Floating Fence Takes Headache Out Of Spring Flooding FENCING Fence Systems 19-5-33 If you've got low-lying pastureland that floods every spring, you'll like the flood-proof floating fence a Mississippi cattle-man came up with. "Hood waters don't tear out my fence anymore," says Wayman Sowell of Can-ton, Miss. "Before I put this up, the water and trash from my upland cotton, corn and soybean fields would tear out my line fence below at least twice a year. This saves a lot of headaches." Sowell and his son, Terry, came up with the system two years ago. They were aiming to protect barbed wire fence in a flood-prone 75-acre paddock used in their 200-acre rotational grazing system. The heart of the system consists of a row of 55-gal. plastic drums that industrial detergent comes in. Sowell got 75 of the 32-in. long drums for $5 apiece from a local chicken processing plant. "I used some 21/2-in. dia. oil well drill stem for posts, setting them deep and spaced four drums apart," he says. "I welded 7/8 in. dia. sucker rod horizontally across the tops of the `posts' and suspended the drums end-to-end 8 in. off the ground from the sucker rod with chains. Chains fasten in holes I drilled in the top of each drum. I drilled holes in the bottom of the drum and attached a strand of 12 ga. barbed wire to the bottom by looping wires through the holes. "Now, whenever it floods, the drums float up with the water so my fence doesn't wash out." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Wayman Sowell, Hwy. 22 West, Canton, Miss. 39046 (ph 601-859-1816).

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