Post and stay testing innovation

Team Kyne attended the last two FCANZ Best Practice days held in the South Island in Ashburton and Cromwell. At both events, there were a number of stay assemblies that had been set up to be tested to the point of failing.

It was a massive eye-opener and very interesting to most who were there, as to what stay assembly was the best for those ground conditions.

In Ashburton, we had Custom Fencing’s Nick Terry with his Ute, using his winch and a set of scales. This worked well as we could slowly apply more force, but we could only bring that to a bit over 2,000kg of pulling force before the Ute would start getting dragged along.

In Cromwell, we had the scales attached to the front of the MF tractor of Ruben Connelly (Precision Fencing). With some strong straps and with careful driving, he slowly reversed up. This worked well, but it was a bit hard to slowly apply more and more force by just slowly letting out the clutch. Here we got the scales to read over 4,000kg on some of the stay assemblies. It was awesome to see just how much force these end assemblies can handle.

These live tests were very informative and a great demonstration for fencers and farmers to see the best practice setup under the given conditions, and made for a great talking point on the day.

The team at Kyne decided to step in and help out by making a much more accurate way of testing them. We needed something that had lots of power and where the power could slowly be applied and not move.

Our team got together and manufactured a purpose-built Post Testing attachment and donated it to FCANZ to use on the Best Practice Days. The Post Testing attachment has nearly 8 tons of force and can be used for both vertical lift testing and horizontal pull testing. Being hydraulically operated, we have full control by simply slowly pulling on a lever to increase force, thus giving us a much more accurate test.

The Post Tester was first put into action at the Feilding Best Practice Day. It was operated on the back of Burne Maxted’s tractor (Maxted Fencing), and we tested approximately 10 posts with a vertical pull, to test different footing methods.
Once again, it proved to be a great talking point and a real eye-opener to see which footing system was the best. We tested the footings with a pressure gauge fitted, so we could see which footing system works best for the ground conditions we had.

We look forward to the next Best Practice Day, where we can use the new scales to measure – it’ll be great to see.

Keep an eye out for the FCANZ Best Practice Days near you in 2026 and make sure you get there.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, Team Kyne.

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