On a small acreage. anywhere from one to twenty acres. fencing is the infrastructure decision that determines the most about your day-to-day life on the property. Where the fences run dictates where you can let stock graze, where the dog can or can't roam, whether the chickens have to live in a permanent run or can free-range, and how much time you spend walking the fence line every weekend checking for breaks.
This guide covers the layout principles that make small-acreage fencing work, the fence types worth knowing about, and how to use PLOT to sketch a layout that holds up to the property you actually have rather than the property you imagined when you bought the land.
Start with the boundary, then work in
On small acreage the boundary fence is usually the most expensive single piece of fencing because it has to be predator-resistant, stock-proof, and (where neighbours exist) a defensible legal demarcation. Get the boundary right first; everything else can iterate.
Use PLOT's polygon tool to trace your property boundary from the satellite imagery. Mark the existing boundary fence with the 'fence. boundary' tool. Note what's there: post-and-wire, ringlock, electric, or just survey pegs and bare ground. Note what needs work. sections damaged by trees, gates that won't close, corners that need bracing.
Decide your stock plan honestly
Different stock want different fencing. Sheep don't respect a fence that horses ignore. Goats see every fence as a personal challenge. Chickens need fence-and-roof or they get taken by hawks. Decide what you're actually going to keep on the property. and what you'd like to keep five years from now. before you choose fence types.
A practical small-acreage stock plan often looks like: a house paddock for the dog and a couple of poultry runs, two or three goat or sheep paddocks for rotational browsing, a horse paddock if you have horses, and a vegetable garden enclosed with rabbit-proof fencing. Five fence types in three acres is not uncommon.
The internal grid
On 1 to 20 acres you don't have room for the long central laneway that works on larger properties. The right pattern is usually a 'comb'. one access lane along one edge, with paddocks hanging off the lane like teeth. Stock move down the lane, into the right paddock, gate closed.
Use PLOT's line tool to sketch the laneway, then the polygon tool for paddocks. Try a few patterns: three large paddocks (set-stocking), six medium paddocks (weekly rotation), or twelve small paddocks (intensive rotation). The live area readout tells you what each paddock can carry. a useful sanity check.
Don't make any paddock so small it's awkward to walk into without scaring stock. 0.1 acre is roughly the lower limit; below that the geometry stops being useful.
Fence types worth knowing about
Post-and-wire (plain or barbed)
The traditional default. Cheap, fast to put up, easy to fix. Holds cattle and horses well; doesn't hold sheep or goats without ringlock infill.
Ringlock (with or without barb top)
Steel woven mesh, usually 1m or 1.2m high. Holds sheep and goats. More expensive than plain wire; lasts 20+ years if galvanised.
Electric. permanent
1 to 3 strands of electrified wire on insulated posts. Cheap to install per metre, requires power and ongoing voltage checks. Excellent for rotational systems because it teaches stock to respect the fence rather than physically restrain them.
Electric. portable
Polywire or polytape on step-in fibreglass posts. The right tool for cell-grazing because you move it daily. Useless as permanent infrastructure.
Chicken / poultry netting
Hexagonal galvanised mesh, usually 0.9 to 1.2m high. Holds chickens but is climbed by foxes and dug under by dogs unless buried 30cm. The 'permanent run + roof' option is more expensive but lower maintenance.
Picket / paling. for house paddock and aesthetics
Where the fence is going to be seen from the road or the house, paling fences cost 3 times a wire fence and last 10 to 20 years. Worth it on the visible 50 metres and not the back boundary.
Gates
A small-acreage property typically needs more gates than the new owner expects. Plan for at least one gate per paddock, two if the paddock is on a corner. Mark gates with PLOT's 'gate' tool. they get a distinct symbol so you can count them at a glance and budget the hardware.
Standard widths: 3.6m for a stock gate (room to drive a small tractor through), 1m for a pedestrian gate, 4.8m for a hay-truck access. Don't undersize the main gate. the difference between a 3m and a 4m gate is the difference between a curse-every-time-you-back-the-trailer-in and a smooth Saturday morning.
Corners and braces
Every corner in a tension-wire fence needs a brace assembly to take the wire tension. Underbuilt corners are the most common reason small-acreage fences fail. Build the corners first, run the wire second; never the other way around.
On PLOT, your fence-line polygon's vertices are your corner positions. Mark each corner that needs a brace with a 'fence brace' point. useful for the materials list.
Maintenance access
Plan the fence layout so you can drive a quad bike or small tractor along the inside of every boundary fence at least once a year for maintenance. If the fence runs through dense vegetation you'll need a cleared corridor; mark that on the layout so the contractor isn't surprised by the scope.
Iterate cheaply in PLOT
The same principle as the paddock-layout guide: redrawing in PLOT costs 30 seconds. Redrawing in the ground costs a weekend. Sketch three layouts, sleep on them, show them to whoever else lives there. Save each as its own concept (Pro tier) or keep each as a separate project (Free tier). The right answer is rarely the first answer.
Where to start
Open the editor with your address. Trace the boundary. Mark existing fences. Sketch your proposed internal grid. Tag fence types as you go. Save. Come back tomorrow and reconsider.