Fence Repair in Henderson County, TN

Cattle country: corners, braces and the wire between them

Start with the name, since two places share it. Henderson County's seat is Lexington. The city of Henderson is in Chester County. If you are looking for fence repair in the city of Henderson, that is on its own page.

Henderson County is cattle country. The 2017 Census of Agriculture counted 786 farms and about 24,000 head of cattle and calves, plus horses, ponies and goats. Livestock made up about two-fifths of farm sales, and about a quarter of the farmland is pasture. That means a lot of pasture fence, and pasture fence tends to fail in a particular order.

The corner tends to go first. A pasture fence is wire pulled tight between posts, and the pull lands on the corner and the brace beside it. A corner that moves lets the wire go slack, and the slack runs down the line to the next corner. When a pasture fence goes bad, the repair starts at the corner, not at the hole.

After the corner, look at the gate. A sagging gate often means the hinge post has moved. Then come the line posts. Solid corners with tired line posts is a repair. Rotted corners and braces mean rebuilding that stretch, because the wire has to pull against something that will stand. The longer reasoning is in the repair or replace guide, and the pasture side of the trade is in farm and horse fencing and split rail and farm fence.

Hills, ridges and stream bottoms

Henderson County straddles the Tennessee Valley Divide. Water on the east side of it drains to the Tennessee River, and water on the west drains toward the Mississippi. USDA soil data shows about six in ten of the county's mapped acres on slopes steeper than five percent, with nearly a third on slopes of 13 to 20 percent. The soil series named Lexington, the largest in the county's soil survey, is described as a mantle of wind-blown silt about two to three feet thick over loamy and sandy marine sediments.

Steep pasture changes what to check first. Find the spots where water crosses the line, because that is where posts get undercut and wire gets buried in washed-in debris. A post reset into the same washed-out hole is only a short-term fix.

The low ground behaves the other way. Roughly a quarter of the county's mapped acres are in soils that flood occasionally or often. A post in wet ground sits in soil that has lost much of its grip, and flood debris stacked on a wire fence can drag it down. A bottom fence is worth a look after high water. See fence line drainage and erosion for the water side and fence posts in West Tennessee soil for the ground.

Rural lots and no county building office

Census survey estimates put mobile homes at more than one in five of the homes in Henderson County. On a rural lot outside any town, the question of who to call about a fence is less obvious.

On permits, the University of Tennessee's county directory lists no building, codes or planning office for Henderson County. That is not the same as having no rules. Inside the City of Lexington, the city's building inspector enforces the city's codes, and the city posts its zoning ordinance online. Section 11-215 of that ordinance covers fences, walls and hedges. Outside any town, ask the county mayor's office, (731) 968-0122, who covers your address. A like-for-like repair is a different question from a rebuild, a moved line or a taller fence, and those are the ones to ask about before pricing. The city side is on fence repair in Lexington. For a general idea of the questions to ask a permit office, see fence permits in Jackson and Madison County, though the rules there do not apply here.

The storm record, and what it does to a long run

NOAA's database lists 14 tornadoes in Henderson County in records that start in 2000, four of them rated F2 or EF2 or stronger. On May 4, 2003, an F4 went through Lexington, and the record says 36 homes were destroyed and nearly a thousand damaged. It is the same tornado that hit Jackson. On December 11, 2021, an EF2 ran about 15 miles from Sand Ridge to New Safford and into Natchez Trace State Park.

Long runs of pasture fence are exposed to wind and to whatever it knocks down. A limb or a whole tree across wire can pull posts over and stretch the wire past recovery. We repair what a storm did to the fence and give a free written estimate. The storm damage guide has the post-storm walk-through.

Henderson County fence repair, answered

We Also Repair Fences In

If a fence is past repair, that is fence installation in Henderson County. For the seat, see fence repair in Lexington, which covers the city side. Chester County fence repair covers the county that holds the city of Henderson, and Jackson has its own page. The full reference is on our fence repair page.