What got me building this one is a trap that’s easy to fall into with a subdivided camp. If you split one block into a grid of camps and just multiply the number of camps by one perimeter, you overorder wire and posts by 25% or more, because the fence between two neighbouring camps is shared, it only gets built once. Fence four standalone 100 by 100 metre camps and you need 1 600 metres of fence. Split one 200 by 200 metre block into the same four camps with a shared internal cross and you only need 1 200 metres, for the exact same grazing area. The calculator works that real shared length out for you, alongside a separate mode if you’re fencing standalone camps, or if you just already know your total run.
From there it applies South Africa’s actual fencing standards, not a guess, post spacing and dropper counts by how sturdy a fence you need, strand counts by what you’re fencing against, cattle, sheep, mixed stock, jackal-proof or a proper game fence by species group, and works out strainer and corner posts separately from the cheaper standards in between, since a strainer assembly with its anchor or stay costs several times what a standard post does and lumping them together badly understates a real quote. Gates get worked in too, they reduce the wire run but need their own heavy posts either side. Everything lands in a materials and cost breakdown you can genuinely check a supplier’s quote against, wire or mesh rolls included, since barbed wire is sold by a fixed-mass coil that runs to a different length depending on gauge, which the calculator handles for you.
Unit prices are editable defaults, not gospel, they move with steel prices and vary by supplier, so treat those as a starting point and plug in your own. If you’ve fenced camps recently, I’d be glad to hear whether the post spacing and strand counts match what you actually built to, particularly on the game-fencing side, where I found two slightly different specs in circulation for the smaller game species and went with the more recent one.
That overordering trap is real, and it’s the same maths mistake people make with Home Assistant zone sensors funnily enough, treating shared boundaries as if they belong to both sides separately.
With camps, once you subdivide a block into a grid, the internal fence lines get counted twice if you just do camps times perimeter, because two neighbouring camps share the same stretch of fence. You only need one run of wire and posts for that shared boundary, not two. The proper way is to add up the outer perimeter of the whole block once, then add the internal dividing lines once each, not per camp.
Does your calculator let you input a grid layout like 2x3 camps and have it work out the internal line length automatically, or is it still a manual “enter total fence metres” input for now? That would be the difference between a rough estimate and something a farmer could actually take to Agrinet with confidence. Also curious if you factored strainer post spacing into the cost, those are usually the expensive bit compared to standard droppers.
Yes to both. There’s a “Subdivided block” tab, you just punch in camps across and camps down (2x3, whatever), plus the overall block length and width, and it works out the internal dividers itself using that shared-boundary logic, no manual tally needed.
And strainer/corner posts get their own line, priced separately from the standard posts in between, based on the usual strainer spacing for the fence type you pick. So a mixed-stock fence with a few corners won’t get lumped in with the cheap standards.
Ja this is a handy one. Spent enough money over the years on wire and posts for camps, and if you dont think about the shared fence between camps you order too much, learned that the hard way once. The strainer posts are the real cost though, standards are cheap but a strainer with the stay eats the budget quick, good that its split out separate.
One thing worth adding, if not there already, is wind. Free State wind loosens droppers quicker than any manual says, we check ours twice a year not once. Otherwise nice tool, will show it to my neighbour, he’s still doing sums on paper.
This is actually useful for the farming community, though I wonder how many small-scale farmers in rural areas will actually access it, eh. The internet connectivity out here is still so dodgy that half the people who need this tool won’t be able to use it properly, and those who can might not even know it exists. Would be brilliant if this could work offline or if the local agricultural extension officers had it loaded on their phones to help farmers during visits.