I have never had a chicken killed or injured with my electric netting from Premiere1. I have seen a chicken hit a hot wire with its comb, wattles, or beak (not sure which) while it was standing on the ground and pecking at grass in the netting and get shocked. It jumped up and back about 3 feet, squawked, and went back to eating.
I don't do bantams. My chicks can get through the netting until they are about 7 or 8 weeks old. Most of them don't but they can. It's just something I live with. It's never been a serious problem but the potential for a problem is there. The chicks' feathers insulate them but their head or feet can conduct electricity. For the circuit to be complete they have to touch a hot wire at the same time they are touching a ground. What happens with the young chicks they jump up to a larger opening to go through and don't touch the soil at the same time as they touch a hot wire. With the netting the soil is the ground. An electric fence can be different as far as the ground.
One of the safety features of the netting and electric fencing is that it pulses instead of having a steady current. It will pulse about 50 times a minute. That gives the critter or a person the chance to turn loose. The instinctive reaction is to turn loose and jump back. They could not turn loose of a steady current which would likely kill them.
I have found critters trapped in the netting. The only "fast" critter was a frog, which died. I've had three snapping turtles that were sitting there jerking every time that current pulsed. When I turned the current off and untangled them two of them walked away and apparently lived. One died. I found a possum tangled in the netting, again jerking every time it pulsed. She died but it wasn't the electricity that killed her. But it trapped her, tangled her up. The saddest to me was a five feet long rat snake that died. It tried to get through the netting and couldn't get free. Not tangled, just could not get free. I had a deer hit the netting running and knocked it down, but that deer kept running. I could tell by the footprints that it was running.
I have no doubt that netting has prevented countless fox, coyote, dogs, raccoons and such from getting to my chickens. I saw a wondering dog touch it once. It yelped, ran about 50 feet, looked back at the netting, then kept walking away. I never saw it again.
No matter what you do in life something can happen. Even if you stay in bed all day to try to avoid anything you can get bedsores. If you are going to keep chickens things will happen. I try to minimize the bad things but I know I'll never totally eliminate them. I just do the best I can.
