Fenceable is a tool for farmers practicing management-intensive rotational grazing (MIRG). In MIRG, farmers rotate livestock through small paddocks, as often as once every day. Many MIRG practitioners use mobile electric netting to bound temporary paddocks instead of erecting permanent fences. This saves on capital costs, but redeploying electric fences every day is labor-intensive.

Fenceable halves the time required to deploy 50-meter lengths of electric netting by allowing hands-free hip-mounted carrying. Keeping the hands free enables farmers to plant fence poles while walking, and the narrow rack keeps fence poles in the order they should go out.

Demonstration of Fenceable being worn with fencing loaded on it

Gallery

Our whole group visited a Vermont farm to practice deploying electric fences
The farmer has to lay the fence down before standing up the poles, requiring two passes
One of the many ideas we brainstormed to streamline the process. My idea was originally a chest-mounted design.
The first design made after transitioning to the bent tube materials
Playing with small wire to come up with the final shape.
Bending investigation done on different materials using different methods.
Reference template for bending final design
Final design

The team poses with every iteration of the design. Earliest on right to latest on left.

I would like to include videos from field testing but I don’t want to post videos of people without their permission.

This project was done as a part of ENGS 21: Introduction to Engineering, a class I took in the fall term of my sophomore year.