Permanent electric fence set-up with gate

[Joeschooks]

I built another run last year and predator proofing took a surprising amount of thought. By far our biggest problem is foxes. It was too expensive to put a fox proof roof on the whole area so it had to be open top and protected by electric fence. But poultry netting seemed like a somewhat temporary solution. I wanted an inexpensive, permanent, solid, electrified enclosure with a gate that I didn't have to unhook or turn off to enter the run. For anyone who has tried researching there's not much information on this. It took a bit of thought but its' really quite simple so I thought I'd share my solution/set-up and hopefully help someone else.

I built a wooden gate with 2" welded wire mesh on the inside which is hooked up to earth via a small section of lead out cable on the hinge side. I ran 4 live strands of 3mm polyrope on insulators on the outside of the posts. An electric fence doesn't need to create one continuous loop/circuit around the perimeter so both ends of each length of polyrope are tied off where the gate opens. (Of course if you have more than one gate you'll need to run a section of well insulated live cable underground plus an earth at the entry points so that you have current on the sections between your gates!) The gate must open outwards for this set-up but when you open the gate the entire perimeter of your fence will droop. I overcame this by attaching stainless steel screw fastening balls to the polyrope next to the insulators on the first post. This keeps the fence taught and limits the sagging of the polyropes to the gate section only.

As I was only fencing a small 6.5m x 4m area I was able to put heavy duty landscape cloth covered with gravel on the slightly lower ground around the perimeter. This makes the setup low maintenance by preventing weeds growing and shorting out the low level live wire. It also provides drainage to the run.

Job done, and I can say it is extremely effective at keeping out foxes. I've been woken twice in the early hours by a fox realising there's 10,000 volts between his nose and his chicken dinner. They won't try again!

 

[Rickba]

Looks OK, however the holes won't stop critters like weasels and small coons and such. All a weasel needs is a 1 inch square hole to get through. Not to mention they can dig right under that thing. Here's how I did mine. It's a half gate and if you look at the bottom you can see the rat wire skirt around the bottom. That goes all the way around. Everything is grounded to the rat wire. Pred's aren't going to dig under or climb over this fence. I've seen 'em try and they don't make it.

 

[Joeschooks]

Looks OK, however the holes won't stop critters like weasels and small coons and such. All a weasel needs is a 1 inch square hole to get through. Not to mention they can dig right under that thing. Here's how I did mine. It's a half gate and if you look at the bottom you can see the rat wire skirt around the bottom. That goes all the way around. Everything is grounded to the rat wire. Pred's aren't going to dig under or climb over this fence. I've seen 'em try and they don't make it.
View attachment 1259410

You’ve got a great set up there and a nice lot of chooks.
Thanks for your feedback. Fortunately we don’t have coons here in the UK. You’ve a good point about the smaller critters getting in. We don’t have many pests here and I think any little rodents and the like that are small enough to get in wouldn’t be a direct threat to large fowl (chicks have a separate coop and run with 10mm welded mesh all round and built on concrete foundation) and they are of course locked away at night. Admittedly mice, rats etc could bring disease in and I disinfect the whole setup with Virkon S weekly to minimise that and naturally feeders are suspended and under cover. By far our biggest problem here is foxes but they touch the bottom wire and learn their lesson so don’t try to dig. Even if they did try to dig the lower poly rope is on stand-off insulators and there’s so many bricks in the soil they’d have a hell of a job Next door is an easier target.

 

[Rickba]

You’ve got a great set up there and a nice lot of chooks.
Thanks for your feedback. Fortunately we don’t have coons here in the UK. You’ve a good point about the smaller critters getting in. We don’t have many pests here and I think any little rodents and the like that are small enough to get in wouldn’t be a direct threat to large fowl (chicks have a separate coop and run with 10mm welded mesh all round and built on concrete foundation) and they are of course locked away at night. Admittedly mice, rats etc could bring disease in and I disinfect the whole setup with Virkon S weekly to minimise that and naturally feeders are suspended and under cover. By far our biggest problem here is foxes but they touch the bottom wire and learn their lesson so don’t try to dig. Even if they did try to dig the lower poly rope is on stand-off insulators and there’s so many bricks in the soil they’d have a hell of a job Next door is an easier target.

OK, I missed the part where you were in the UK. I've got more pred's here then a stray cat has fleas. Especially up here in the mountain's where I live. Good luck to ya' buddy.

 

[Howard E]

Looks like both of you have really good electric fence setups.

Can you post more photos and detail of how you did these? I'd like to link this to some of my electric fence posts as excellent examples for others to follow.

 

[Joeschooks]

Looks like both of you have really good electric fence setups.

Can you post more photos and detail of how you did these? I'd like to link this to some of my electric fence posts as excellent examples for others to follow.

Thanks Howard. It would be a pleasure. Getting dark here now but I’ll post a few more pics in the next day or so.

 

[Joeschooks]

Looks like both of you have really good electric fence setups.

Can you post more photos and detail of how you did these? I'd like to link this to some of my electric fence posts as excellent examples for others to follow.

Hi Howard. A few more pics as promised. My energizer is IP54 (splash proof) hence it’s housed in a lunchbox - a tenth of the price of a proper electrical box and does the job just fine. You’ll also notice I have polyrope along the top of the boundary fence. The lines on this section alternate live, earth, live, earth. This is because my chicken area is only 3ft from our boundary fence so a predator could have easily climbed the boundary fence and hopped right over the electric chicken fence. I also have fox spikes on the corner posts as i have another coop, sheds and a compost bin near two of the corners which a predator could have potentially climbed on to gain access. There’s a handy flick switch on the left post to turn the entire fence off easily if needed, although generally there’s no need as it’s easy for humans to access when live - that was one of my requirements because I know I’d forget to turn it back on afterwards! With regards earthing, you’ll notice I’ve connected all the welded wire fence sections together and connected back to an earth stake within the run. I have another earth stake about 50ft away which is connected directly to earth on the energizer. Both earth stakes are 3’4” long and are not wired directly to each other. This is ample for my relatively small set up and I get 10,400V when tested with my digital tester. I can tell you that is quite a belt!! I won’t accidentally be touching that again with my metal rake!! I should probably just say again that this fence isn’t electrified on the inside so no shocks to the chickens, my main aim is to keep ground predators (mainly foxes here in UK) out. None of the girls have ever tried to escape but it’s a little over 4ft high and they all have a wing clipped so I don’t think they’d make it if they tried! I hope this info is helpful but any questions just ask.

 

[Cryss]

Excellent thread!