If you go to the Oregon State University Extension website and look for their publication "Growing Kiwifruit PNW 507" (free to download) it will probably answer this question and any others you may have! I also just planted a hardy kiwi yesterday; after which seeing your post gave me a good laugh "It's only about 6 feet tall"; the one I planted I started from a cutting last year and is just coming up on maybe 16", the several other commercial ones I planted a couple of months ago range from 2' to 4' tall:) So sounds like your plants are well ahead of ours!

And are you talking about your plant only being on a vertical trellis, or going up 8' then out onto a trellis? Most people growing hardy kiwi's train them up a vertical post then out laterally onto a T shaped trellis about 5' off the ground; that's what I'll be doing, though our trellis will also be part of an occasional use fence to keep horses in the yard to mow the grass:) And from what I've heard / read; you don't want to prune kiwi's except when they are dormant, if you do they will weep gooey latex like ooz all over for what seems like forever...unless you wait until they are entirely dormant.

Hope this helps!
Dave

Ummmm - if you want to keep deer out, what you've got won't do it!! They could hop right over an 8' fence, but wouldn't bother, they would just go right through the 18" gaps in your fence - I've seen them go right through the standard 5 wire fence around my lady friend's horse pasture without even slowing down; and the spacing on that fence is about 6 to 8" between wires! You'd probably need at least a 10' mesh fence to keep deer out, I'm sure there's plenty of info out there about keeping deer out. A friend with a hobby orchard (around 85 varieties of apples) tried all kinds of things for years, and finally went to a 10' mesh fence around his entire house & orchard area with a gate which is closed at night - he planted grapes along a lot of the fence; they get the grapes on the inside and the deer eat the ones on the outside:)