Coyote...

[Fricasee]

I came home from work last Thursday afternoon. Went into the run to give banana and yogurt treats and didn't notice anything amiss. Then my boyfriend says hey, what's wrong with the fence? I went back outside and the chicken wire was bent in half on one section and the t-post was bent. I did a quick head count and yep, I'm down one chicken. One of my babies that was just starting to lay.

There were no other signs of the attack. Not a single feather! We are thinking it must have been a coyote. They are a grab quick and go kind of predator? Bears always come at night and I figure if it had been bear ALL the chickens would be gone. We had a dog attack in July. He got two chickens and there were feathers EVERYWHERE.

I decided it was time to go ahead and install an electric fence. This morning the top two wires on one side were pulled off the poles. Pretty sure it was the deer coming to eat the chicken food and they just got hung up with a hoof on the launch. I feel pretty good about the fence. I'm slightly worried it may not be powerful enough for the bear but I'm checking with our local bear management org to get their input.

 

[Sara Ranch]

Around here folks recommend a low wire and a higher wire OR a mid line wire. If the animal touches it's nose to the electric wire, it won't come back.

 

[pennyJo1960]

yes run wire low, mid and high should deter most good luck

 

[Fricasee]

I have a four wire set up. The lowest is less than a foot off the ground and the highest is at about four feet off the ground.

 

[Egghead_Jr]

6k volts if not grounding on weeds or structure is plenty for bear. 4k is plenty for everything else.

 

[Fricasee]

I have a fence tester. Boyfriend said it was at the max when he tested it, but I don't know what the max is. Lol. So I will have a look see when I get home today. I cleared a wide swath around the whole chicken yard. That was the hardest part of the project because the willow bushes were encroaching pretty aggressively towards the back fence. I got whapped in the face a lot and I said some bad words. I also weedeatered the ground. That will require some maintenance for sure.

 

[BlueBaby]

I have a four wire set up. The lowest is less than a foot off the ground and the highest is at about four feet off the ground.

If your top wire is only 4-feet, it won't be good enough for a coyote. Coyotes can jump a 6 to 7 foot fence!

 

[Fricasee]

Well, that's the best I could do on short notice. Hopefully it will work. If not, I tried.

 

[Howard E]

I also use only 4 wires and this is how I have them setup:



Bottom wire is only 5 inches or so off the ground. About 5 inches or so spacing between each additional wire, so top wire is no more than 24 inches or so off the deck. So goal here is not to duplicate a physical fence, but to put a set of hot wires in the path of predators and other animals (including our birds), hoping they will bump into it.

I have concluded that finding wires down is a good thing. It is an indication somebody got zapped. More on this below.

Most animals, including deer, could easily jump over this, but after their initial encounter, most do not come back. Predators that can jump don't......they try to deal with this as they would any other physical fence by crawling through it......getting zapped in the process. And I think once zapped, they are reluctant to jump it.....not knowing what awaits them on the other side.

This same fence is also effective against deer. Last year I had a patch of turnips sown in a fall garden area (mostly as green fodder for the birds). We took a week long trip, during which I shut the fence down. When we got back, turnips looked like a Texas cattle drive had gone through. Deer tracks everywhere and they had riddled the turnips. Fence went back on and all that stopped. First clue was finding a couple wires off their posts. I think deer either walk into it in the dark (can't see it) or else think they can step over it, brushing against it in the process. Either way, they get zapped. They learn where the fence is and while they don't understand what it was that zapped them, they remember the zap and rarely come back for more. But as for wires off the fence, they get it going in and if they jump forward, they find themselves trapped within. Some will try to get out the same way, getting zapped again on the way out. Others panic and hit the fence running (heading out). That takes the wires down.

This is my fence tester:



This one has a digital readout, so you know what the actual voltage is. Others may only have a series of colored lights. Maxed out would be the last light........which may indicate a range, but not the actual voltage. But maxed out may be 7,000 volts plus, which should do the trick against most animals.

Lastly, it is important to keep these fences clear and running at full capacity. We had a frontal storm blow through a few days back and the high winds knocked over some tomato cages. I found one of them laying on top of the fence, which was then shorted out. Meter on the fencer was way down, indicating all the shock was going to ground through the wire cage. Any animal that touched that fence would have received only a mild shock if any at all. Once cleared, it went back to hot. So it is important to keep these clear of any weeds or shorts that would bleed off the voltage. BTW, while that fencer was off, I noticed my birds jumped over a recently erected single wire.....one intended to keep them out of a garden area. That was the only time they have been inside and once the fence returned to hot, they have not been back. I am beginning to suspect these animals can sense when the fence is hot and when it is not. That they can somehow tell. If so, it would explain a lot.

 

[stjohn19]

Just for added security you can always put a wood 2X4 along the bottom of the fence just as back up. I also when i made my coop because we have a bad coyote problem, we brought the fence 2 feet into the ground. To stop them from digging their way in.