Stretching fence

Every once in a while you need to stretch a fence. In our case it's when we have cantankerous 'hooker' cows (Where they place one of their horns in the wire and just flip it up and walk on through between) You need to stretch a fence and place stays in. (I will blurb more about stays later). 

Here I have the top wire ready to be stretched while Gin hangs out.

I then kinda skipped the top wire and realized that I wasn't taking pictures so I took pictures of the second wire. We have a wire stretcher, which is shown here in yellow. We place one side around an anchored point, in our case it is a pipe H brace that has been cemented in. 

I secure the other end of the stretcher to the wire and give the handle a bunch of cranks. Note: if you have an old fence that is rusted, don't put too much tension on the wire or it will snap like a twig and then you'll have to splice the fence. But for this wire that is newer, you can crank it up.

I finish with using my fencing pliers and securing the wire around the H brace and putting is much tension on it while it is still in the stretcher. You don't want to let loose of the tension and realize you lost your stretch cause you didn't pull the wire tight. Then I release the stretcher and you have a new tight wire.

Danno takes a break with one of our horses Sugar. 

You always know that a wire needs tightened when you can do this. Boomer is cruising past me to greet the horses too. But he's our puppy (look how big he is at 10 months) so he just barked at them.