Farm & Lifestyle Consulting
Fencing, laneways and handling facilities laid out around how the property is actually worked.
Why people bring this to somebody outside
A farm's fencing layout is a decision made once and lived with for thirty years. Get the paddock sizes, the laneways and the water right and the place runs itself; get them wrong and you pay for it in labour every single week, quietly, forever.
This is the same work whether it is a corporate group converting a station, a family farm subdividing, or somebody who has just bought forty hectares and needs to know where to start. What has to be contained, how stock will move, where the water is going, what the ground will allow, and how to stage it so the property keeps working while the fencing goes in.
Handling facilities get the same treatment and deserve more of it than they usually get. A set of yards is used every week for decades. The layout decides how many people it takes to draft, how the stock behave when they get there, and whether the person on the gate is safe. It is worth an argument up front and almost nothing to change on paper.
Yards part-built. The race, the forcing pen and the ramp are the three places a layout decision is felt every week.
What this covers
Farm fencing design and planning
The whole fencing layout for a property, planned rather than accumulated.
Subdivision planning and paddock layout
Paddock sizes and shapes set by stock class, feed and how the block is actually grazed.
Water reticulation and fencing integration
Troughs, lines and paddock boundaries planned together instead of one after the other.
Deer, sheep, cattle and equine fencing advice
Each of them wants a different fence, and one specification will not serve all four.
Laneway and paddock optimisation
Lane widths, surfaces and junctions that move stock quickly without wrecking their feet.
Design and planning of livestock handling facilities for cattle, sheep, deer, horses and other livestock
Yards designed around the stock and the people who work them, not around a standard kit.
Yard layout optimisation to improve stock flow, animal welfare and operational efficiency
Fixing an existing set of yards that fights you, which is usually a layout problem rather than a materials one.
Race, forcing pen and loading ramp design
The three places where poor design shows up as delay, injury and stress.
Maintenance and upgrade recommendations for existing handling facilities
What to repair, what to replace and what to leave alone, with costs.
Who this is for
- Corporate and investor owners buying or converting rural land
- Farm owners and managers planning a subdivision, a conversion or a yard rebuild
- Lifestyle block owners setting a property up properly the first time
- Equine, deer and dairy operations with specific containment and handling requirements
What you get
- A fencing, laneway and water layout plan for the property
- Yard and handling facility layouts with the stock flow shown
- A staged programme so the work fits the season and the budget
Costed and agreed before I start, never after. A phone call about a straightforward question is usually free.
Often taken together with
Fence Design & Specification
Deciding what is going in, and writing it down properly, before anybody is asked to price it.
Read more →Asset Management
Knowing what fencing you own, what condition it is in, and what it is going to cost you over the next ten years.
Read more →Independent Fencing Advice
A straight answer from somebody who is not quoting the work.
Read more →Paid for the advice, not for the work that follows
I am a certified fencer and I also own a fencing contracting business. That is stated up front rather than buried, because it is the first thing anybody sensible wants to know about an independent adviser.
The rule is simple and it does not bend. If I am advising you, my contracting company is not tendering for your job. You can have my advice or you can have my crew, and you cannot have both on the same project, because the moment you could the advice stops being worth anything. If you would rather have the fence built than the question answered, I will say so and point you elsewhere.
It works the same way in a dispute. I give the same finding whichever party is paying for the assessment, and if your position is the weaker one you will hear that from me first.
The contracting business is Custom Fencing Ltd, which is where the experience behind all of this comes from - and it is disclosed here so that you can check it rather than discover it.
FCANZ Certified Fencer. The Fencing Contractors Association of New Zealand assesses fencers against a practical standard that has to be maintained rather than earned once. The reason it matters here: the advice comes from somebody who still has to go out and build to the standard he is describing.
Tell me what you are trying to work out
Most people get in touch because they have a decision to make and nobody independent to check it with - a tender that does not add up, a fence line that keeps failing, a dispute that has stopped moving, or a property they are about to buy. Describe the situation and I will tell you honestly whether it needs me, and what it would take.
021 614 100- nick@customfenceconsulting.co.nz
- 130 Edinburgh Street, Waikouaiti 9510, Otago
- Monday to Friday, 7am - 5.30pm
Based at Waikouaiti in East Otago and working throughout New Zealand. Site work anywhere in the country; desk work - a tender review, a specification, an opinion on a set of photographs - can start the day you send it.