A treatise on Electric Fencing

[Howard E]

The training process that seems to work best for me is to use just the bottom single wire at first.......all my birds seem to find it by just walking up to it and stepping on it to go over. Hits them on the bottom of their foot. For most, that seems to end the travel. After that, I add the 2nd and any additional wires. To get over that, they have to hop or fly over.....meaning leaving their feet and going airborne.....and most won't do it. I suspect they fear what will happen when they come back down. The fear being it will get them and they won't be able to get away. The 3rd and 4th wires, if used, are for predators. If just the low wires, some dogs will see it as a physical barrier and just step over (if dog is large enough) or simply hop over.......that is before they get zapped. So a stray dog might just cross over it to do damage, never getting shocked.

So the upper wires......and a gap between them, entices them to try to crawl through. That usually gets them.

The other method of discovery is also to bait it. Put a smellable on the wire a dog (or fox, coyote, bear, etc) will sniff or lick. If the fence is running 7,000 volts plus, that well send most of them to the horizon.

On the gates, I don't typically use them as the fence is low enough I mostly just step over it. If you do want gates, for mowers, etc. they sell spring loaded handles for that purpose. Set T post corners where you want your gate to be. One T post on each end of the gate. The gate itself is a short segment of fence (as long as you want your gate to be wide), handle end connects to a small loop from the hot side source......other end dead ends on an insulator. That way, when you open the gate, that short segment of gate wire goes dead and you can lay it on the ground while you are using the gate. Use one handle for each segment of gate.

All this sounds complicated until a person has actually done it, and then you realize it is all logical and easy to do.........and most importantly of all......highly effective.

 

[Howard E]

Hmmmm......a consulting gig? This might turn into a way to make some money if I was smart enough to charge for what I do, which I'm not.

Short answer......yeah, kidding aside, I'd come down to take a look. What you describe also sounds like a way to do some experimenting with what works and what doesn't.....to come up with recommendations for best practices.

Send me a PM with address and we will work out a time.

 

[Molpet]

I would like to suggest some phrasing changes on the technical end, since I am almost an engineer.

So long as a layperson can follow it.
Sometimes tech speak confuses people who are unfamiliar with it

 

[Howard E]

Dry conditions present two problems. First is the fire danger, which has largely been eliminated by low impedance fencers (which today, is almost all of them).

https://blog.kencove.com/low-impedance-vs-high-impedance/

The second issue is very dry soil, which may not conduct the juice as well as wet soil does, so may reduce the zing of the shock under some conditions. I don't have much experience with desert dry conditions, but if the fence voltage tests out, you know it is working. If in doubt, stand on the same ground the intended target animal does in your bare feet and grab the wire. If it bites, its working.

 

[Howard E]

I don't have power to my coop so I think i will look into a solar set-up with the mesh fencing, it would be good to put around the coop and my (small) garden.

You can do a solar powered battery, in which case you would not have to worry about recharging. I had the battery and I have a charger, so I simply got the 12 volt unit, no solar panel. And yes, in my opinion, these are the way to go with a remote pen area. I would not want to run a hot wire cross country to get to it. Also, if you have to trouble shoot it, you have to walk back and forth to turn it on or off, or install a gate or interrupter switch at your fence, or have help. I don't have help.

You can add a solar panel to any battery, but unless it is a regulated panel setup as a trickle charger, it could easily overcharge your battery and damage it. So if you get a solar panel model, it may be best to shop for them incorporated or included with the charger. An integrated model. They are more expensive, but may be less trouble in the long run.

BTW, not advising one way or the other, but Parmak offers the same charger I have with a battery and solar panel included. Look for one with comparable or even greater zap to it. Don't make it tickle.....make it hurt. When a coon or fox touches it, you want to extract the "yelp heard round the world"!

 

[aart]

Howard E....seriously, you should probably submit this to the site for publication as an article on the site...it is that well written.

Most articles here are not 'submitted for publication'...anyone can write one as a Member Page.

Am saving a link to this thread in my notes for sure.

 

[Rock Home Isle]

This entire thread is amazing

 

[Howard E]

On fences.........time to elaborate and mention some more options..........

Found this youtube on protecting corn from coons:

Corn and chickens? Same principle applies......keeping coons and varmints out.

Note how this guy has included a third wire in his setup. The middle wire is not hot, but is grounded. As per the guy that produced this video, his claim is coons and varmints will not crawl under the low wire, but over it and through two wires. By putting in a middle wire and grounding it, the coon is almost certain to get zapped. Others will use a full three wire setup, with all three being hot. That may be overkill, or not depending on the severity of your problem.

This is actually a variation on an electric poultry netting option you can buy, in which the horizontal bands in the fence are not all hot, but alternate between hot and grounded. Again, this way you don't have to rely upon the ground (again, literally the ground you stand upon) to be the conductor for the negative side. The fence itself it also connected to the ground so is as good a connection as can be had.

Graphic looks like this:




This guy also spent a great deal of time talking about the need for this elaborate ground rod setup. I'm not sure he understands the nature of things, as that is vast overkill. If you were to simply drop a short piece of wire from both the red (hot) connection and black (ground) connection, and put your tester on these two wires, you would be measuring the full shocking potential of your fencer. The main reason for a good ground is to make certain that the connection a person makes to the ground (again, literally the ground you walk on) is as good as it is from the simple drop wire. If one steel post in the ground gives you the same reading on your tester, you can't do better than that if you add 100 more ground rods. Maxed out is maxed out. You can have 50 ground rods and if the coon or varmint is not well grounded, it won't matter. So putting in the grounded middle wire takes the guesswork out of it. That it ties the middle grounded wire directly to the fencer and will be every bit as good a connection as the hot wire side, so should deliver the maximum shock possible from your fencer, even if you add 50 more ground rods and pound them in halfway to China. So test the fencer with short wires, then test it through your ground and if that is the same, you can't do better than that and it is enough.

One of the problems with these low wire fences is to be effective, they have to be that close to the ground to keep the varmint from sneaking under it, so there is a constant maintenance issue to keep the weeds and grass from shorting them out. Low impedance fencers, are designed to punch through this so as to continue shocking, even though the fence is grounded by weeds. I can only imagine, however, that will shorten battery life as the juice gets drained off through the weeds, not to mention a less violent shock delivered to the varmint.

One addition benefit of the low single or double or triple wire fences is with the birds themselves. If they do somehow manage to find themselves on the outside, a single bird or two trying to rejoin their buddies will eventually work up the nerve to punch through these to get back home, and even more so if a varmint is in hot pursuit and they are fleeing for their lives. Not so much if they are outside a woven wire or some other high wire fence. They are trapped and easy prey.




Sketch above depicts another fence option used by an experienced user and coon fighter I met a few years back. For his fence, he simply pounded in some 2" x 2" x 2 foot wooden stakes, the kind used for setting light concrete forms, laying out foundations, etc. (you can buy them pre-made at the box stores and lumber yards). To this he added about a foot or so of chicken wire, leaving a couple inches of wood stake sticking out on top of that. In the ends or tops of the stakes, he nailed in electric fence insulators, the kind you nail into fence posts. So he then had a single hot wire, but it was running about knee high and well up off the ground away from weeds, grass, etc., yet low enough a person could still step over it (carefully!) without getting shocked. I don't think he even had a gate....to come and go he was simply stepping over it. So a coon encounters the fully grounded chicken wire fence, tries to climb it and when he reaches the top, grabs the hot wire with his grubby little paws and gets blasted into next week. This fence has the added benefit of also being about belly high on a deer. Not high enough a deer will jump over it, but just right so they will simply step over it, brush the wire with their belly and also get blasted into next week. This fence required a whole lot less maintenance than a low wire and would be more permanent in nature. He was spraying the ground on both sides of it with Roundup to keep ANY weeds and grass from growing up through it.

A variation on this knee high fence, if you don't trust chicken wire, is to use the same type setup, except in this one, you use a heavier welded wire in the 2" x 4" range, using the same L shaped apron trick used to keep predators from digging under our runs and coops. Half on the ground and half on the fence posts (ideally steel posts which when connected to the fence make a direct ground), with a single or double hot wire on top they have to reach onto to climb over. Not so high as to induce a fox or coyote to jump over, you want them to try to climb over by putting their paws on top and BAMMO! Again, less maintenance than a low ground wire. Similar to a plastic rope poultry net fence, but less expensive and more permanent in nature. On this one, they can't go under it......can't go over it.....and can't go through it. The ultimate perimeter?

 

[Howard E]

I'm from the school that says the only dumb question is the one you didn't ask. Almost every question and example is a learning opportunity for the person asking, plus the legions of those reading, who might have the same type setup, or was thinking of something similar and can then continue or modify as needed to make it better.

The part about having run wire fastened to wood or wire on a wooden gate is a good example. Wood is not a good conductor of electricity, so wire that is nailed to wood may not be grounded as well as you would like it to be. Perhaps only a tickle is felt even from a powerful fencer? So ground it or even add a steel post in the mix to help ground it to make it all it can be.

BTW, adding a steel post now and then to any WIRE fence built using wooden fence posts is a good idea and part of a well designed, well built fence. The steel post acts as a ground rod to bleed off dangerous lightening strikes that might hit the wire fence and zip up and down it trying to find it's way to ground. Better it go to ground through a fence post rather than your prize bull, horse........or you.

This is why I felt comfortable connecting the ground lead or negative wire from my fencer to the woven wire fence behind it. That fence is connected to at least 8 or 9 steel posts, so is very well grounded.......more than enough to make my fencer work properly.

 

[Howard E]

BTW, I know there are a number of folks on this forum who have a lot of experience with electric fences. I encourage them to post pictures and descriptions of their setups and how them maintain them. We might all learn something.