Electro Plastic Poultry Netting and Kids

[patandchickens]

They're old enough to be able to learn not to touch the fence. However I'd be sure not to put it somewhere they might actually RUN INTO it (like at the end zone of where they play football), because while touching a fence once isn't going to hurt you, getting TANGLED IN it and zapped repeatedly can and does kill people.

Electronet can perfectly well use the same charger as you would use for any other electric fence. It's made of the same electric twine that lots of people use in their normal electric fences. You just have to make sure that the charger is appropriately sized as electromesh has a bit more resistance than wire fences and is apt to lose a bit of charge from accidental grounding out as well.

Use a fence tester (preferably a digital one, yes I know they're more expensive, rather than one of the five-neon-lights jobbies that are notoriously inaccurate - but anything is probalby better than nothing). If you have too little charge, the fence is pointless; too much and it is a safety hazard.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[jvls1942]

I have been a farmer for 67 years.

I have NEVER heard of anyone getting electricuted from an electric fence..

I could see ,if you had a heart pacemaker, where it could cause problems..

how entangled and how long does it take?

as long as I am at it.. do you know the proper way to touch test for electricity?

 

[patandchickens]

General discussion of how electric fences can kill you and how to install it safely, from the Australian gov't (they use a lot of electric fencing in Australia and NZ): www.infrastructure.sa.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/21412/ElectricFence_202331_web.pdf
All fence-charger manufacturers' literature that I've ever seen warns you of the same things.

Large livestock and wildlife certainly get killed on a regular (if not 'common') basis if they get tangled in electric fence -- a good friend had to turn off her fence one morning to remove a deer whose antlers had gotten tangled in her Electrobraid and it was unable to break free and died. Google will provide you with many other cases, mostly oriented towards wild animals b/c it is less of a concern with domestic animals (merely another variety of fence death, which as you know is just something that happens something)

Case reports of human deaths are difficult to find online (what you need is a good university library with journals of occupational health/safety type things), it is not something that mfr's tend to want publicized and it IS a rare event for someone to be killed by a proper commercially-made fence charger so it's not something there's a wide internet literature on. I've plowed thru a bunch of stuff in the past, unfortunately did not save references, and IIRC there is a fence-related death every 2 yrs or so, roughly 3/4 of which occur from a fence being unexpectedly super-electrified by lightning or fallen power lines, and the other 1/4(ish) being cases where a person gets effectively stuck in a fence and zapped to death. Two that stick in memory are a farmer who was reaching across a water trough (or standing in, I forget) to do something with a fence that had a live wire on it, and in some way slipped/fell so that he was hung on the wire and in the water trough, and died; and one involving drunkenness.

Additionally there is one case that IIRC is pretty easy to find via google of a child killed by a continuous (not pulsed) commercial charger; this is inherently a less safe kind of charger than the ones that pulse but AFAIK they *are* still sold for dog fencing and there is no reason a person couldn't buy one and hook it up to their electronet if they didn't know better.

Just because something is rare does not mean, IMO, that people should not know of the risk so they can take steps to avoid it if they wish. I mean, it is not like most people have terribly good common sense about electricity or electric-fence installation, in general.

JMHO,

Pat

 

[redbuffalo]

Thanks so much for all of the great advice and the funny stories with the fences

Tracy

 

[jvls1942]

If we are going to get rediculous about it, we better stop eating apples fres from a tree.. because I heard of somebody stepping on an apple and it squashed and they slid and broke their arm..

an electric fence is not dangerous in itself. but sure, if there is a live wire laying on it, it could kill.. however the same thing could happen with a regular barbed wire fence. you could even get killed talking on a phone if lightning hit the line..

as for animals dieing in an electric fence.. it is not the shock that kills them. it is the panic and exhaustion or strangulation,,..