IT'S not often you will find a set of steel stockyards with grease nipples built into the hinges and on the gate latches.

The yards, at Yancowinna, near Cape Paterson, are the work of the property's manager, Jim Tayler.

Jim, 59, has spent his working life on this Bass Coast Angus cattle property where the owner since 1987, Dennis Ginn, has employed him.

Jim is an ideas man who discusses what has to be done with Dennis and then gets on with the job.

Jim likes to create and improvise and often will not bother with a manufactured product if he can recycle something.

"We haven't bought a manufactured gate for a long time," Dennis said.

Dennis said Jim not only made all the property's tube steel and mesh farm gates, but also fashioned the pins and gudgeons to swing them.

Four years ago, Jim redesigned the 400-head capacity stockyards to be a one-man operation.

He said the old wood rail and steel post yards had formerly been a traditional walk-up alley and square forcing yards to a crush that needed up to three people to work 100 head.

For the new design, Jim visualised the yards as segments of a pie, with the forcing yards radiating around a central crush and undercover work area.

The yards have a semi-circular race that leads to the crush and electronic scales area.

There is an insulated laboratory for artificial insemination and an office adjoining the work area that Jim also built.

Jim welded all the steel tube panels and made the gates for the new yards.

He used 38mm tube steel for the panels and has attached them to 153mm-diameter hollow steel posts with pins welded on the edges that connect the panels to each post.

Gate hinges are circular and fit over the concrete-filled posts to rest on collars welded on to the post.

The yard has a concreted floor with a criss-cross pattern formed on its surface to prevent cattle and workers from slipping.

Dennis farms a total of 370ha in the area.

Yancowinna covers 250ha and has a central laneway system to connect its paddocks.

Jim estimates Yancowinna has about 9km of electric and strand wire fences that will need to be replaced and he has finished about five so far.

The new paddock fences consist of eight 2.5mm-diameter Tie-Easy Long Life wires 125mm apart with four recycled hardwood droppers to suspend the wires between treated pine posts spaced every 11 metres.

The corner posts and strainer posts are treated pine up to about 20cm in diameter placed in a H-formation.

Jim said the new fence replaced one with nine wire panels and treated hardwood droppers in between treated hardwood posts.

He said the old fences needed to be renewed, as the hardwood posts cracked more quickly than treated pine and the wires, despite being galvanised, were rusty.

Persistent rust on fence wires is a problem most farmers don't have to deal with, but when you live near the coast it's part of annual maintenance.

"Most of the electric shorts we get now are due to the (rusty) fence wire breaking," Jim said.

Jim said they only used eight wires in the new fence, as the grass tended to cover the bottom wire.

Yancowinna's new fences have three hot wires.

The formation is two top hot wires, then an earth wire, then another hot wire and the rest all plain wires.

The bottom wire, though, is also an earth.

Jim uses a Speedrite 240-volt mains power unit to charge the wires.

Jim's English-made, one-piece Ritch brand strainer has a tension release mechanism much like a torque wrench.

Jim has also created another handy tool to make laying out wires against the fence easier.

His "gauge stick" has eight snap-on hot wire insulators fastened to it, all placed exactly where the wires have to be attached.

Once he has anchored the eight wires to a post, he snaps each of the eight wires into the individual insulators on the gauge stick and then walks it to the next post.

He staples the eight wires to it, then moves on.