Wire Fencing: Welded vs. Woven

When we first toured our home, the property, while gorgeous, was 3 acres of open land without any type of fencing. Since we have three large dogs who chase wildlife, we needed to install fencing before moving in. (Open land would mean “goodbye, dogs!”)

Unfortunately, fencing is not a cheap project at all! We would love to have a split rail wood fence, but it’s just not in our budget right now. Instead, we decided to install a t-post and wire fence for the time being.

Welded vs. Woven Fencing:

The white line is approx. 250 feet of welded wire fence.
The yellow line is approx. 600 feet of woven wire fence.

We initially installed the welded wire fencing section to keep our dogs on the property. We did a little bit of research on welded vs. woven wire fencing and found a few articles that mentioned the welded wire would keep out the small animals (plus, it was cheaper than the woven). This was the fence we installed first.

When we decided to expand our fenced-in area a few months later, we chose a woven wire option to see the difference between the two.

After installing and living with both types of fencing for over 6 months, here are our thoughts:

Welded Wire Fencing:

A welded wire fence is a type of wire fencing where the intersections of wire are welded together.

We purchased this Welded Wire Fencing.

Pros:

• It’s made of 2″x4″ rectangles, so larger animals cannot get through
• It’s a slimmer & sleeker-looking fence because the welds are not bulky
• When cut, the wires will stay in their place and not unravel
• It’s lightweight and easy to install

Cons:

• Contrary to our research – the small holes will not prevent small animals like rabbits, opossums, or other rodents from getting into your yard. I’ve lost track of how many large rabbits I’ve found dead inside the fence.
• It deforms easily and doesn’t spring back to its original shape if something were to hit it (like the dogs).
• It doesn’t flex or stretch easily, so installing it on uneven ground will deform the fence.
• The welds can become brittle and break after time. (Our welded fence has done a great job of staying together. However, my parents’ welded wire fence has a bunch of welds that have popped apart.)

Woven Wire Fencing:

A woven wire fence is where the intersections of wire are wrapped (woven) around one another (similar to a chain-link fence).

There are many woven wire fences for different applications: cattle, field, goat, horse, etc. All of these have various sized openings.

After talking with our local farm store (because we had no clue what we were looking for), they recommended that we purchase this Sheep & Goat Woven Wire Fence to suit our needs. This particular type has uniform 4″x4″ openings.

Pros:

• It’s so much more flexible. Even with installing it on uneven ground and our dogs jumping on the fence, it springs back to its original shape.
  • Note: It can still deform if you run into it with something with force, like a riding lawn mower…

• This specific fence has smaller (but not too small), uniformly-sized holes. I don’t have to worry about our dogs escaping through the holes or getting their paws or heads stuck.
• It’s much stronger and sturdier than the welded wire fence we purchased.

Cons:

• It can be much heavier than the welded wire fence (think two-person job). We used a fence stretcher, ratchet straps, and our riding lawnmower to stretch out this fence.
• If you cut the fence, the fence will actually unravel. To prevent this, cut vertically through the middle of a square and bend the horizontal wires around the woven sections to keep them in place!
• It’s much more expensive than the welded wire we first purchased.

The Winner:

Goat & Sheep Woven Wire Fence!

Woven wire fencing after 6 months of use:

We absolutely love it. It’s sturdy, strong, and flexible. Minus the times both my husband and I ran our riding lawn mower into it and bent a bunch of the wires (whoops!), this is such a better option for our property. Our large dogs jump on the fence and will even stand on the horizontal wires; the fence doesn’t deform!

Here’s the welded wire fencing after 6+ months of use:

The welded wire has deformed quite a bit since we installed it: it’s floppy and over-stretched all over the place. It really just no longer looks good. We will eventually replace all the welded fencing with woven in the future, but at least our pups have plenty of room to run now!

We strongly recommend using woven wire if you’re in the market for wire fencing, especially since there are multiple types to choose from for different applications! The goat & sheep fencing is perfect for our dogs, and as a bonus, it will already be installed for when we get goats!