Some people love electric fence, other people think they are dangerous or cruel. Still others don’t think that they work. The reality is that the truth probably lies somewhere in between.
We built a high tensile fence on our farm and chose to electrify it. We have found it very effective and are sharing what we’ve learned about how to properly electrify a fence. We are also going to consider why we should electrify the fence and discuss different challenges and options for electric fence.
How to properly electrify a fence
Training animals to electric fence
A properly installed and maintained electric fence can be extremely effective at containing and protecting your animals safely. A poorly maintained one could be dangerous or ineffective. They are absolutely NOT suitable for every animal or every situation. For large pastures they are one of the best fencing options available. Other types of fences are a much better choice for small areas like dry lots, catch pens or weaning pens.
First lets address a concern that some people have about the fences being cruel or hurting animals. All of our modern day fence chargers are designed to be safe. There will be no long lasting damage done by touching a fence. However, anyone who has accidentally touched an electric fence can tell you that it’s an unpleasant experience. Depending on how strong the fence was it can range from an unpleasant tingle to a painful shock that you feel all the way down to your toes.
That is the point
Touching an electric fence is supposed to be a painful/unpleasant experience. If the experience of touching an electric fence was not unpleasant, it would not do its job of containing your animals and deterring predators. A properly working electric fence is an effective way to train your livestock to remain in the appropriate spaces and to deter predators who could devastate your herd.
Electric fence is a psychological barrier not a physical one
This is very important to remember. Other types of fence like board fence, field fence, or even non-electrified high tensile fence are designed to be physical barriers. Electric fence is a psychological barrier designed to keep animals in because the think they cannot cross it. So the experience of interacting with it has to be so unpleasant as to deter future interactions.
Electricity teaches respect for fence
This leads us to one of the reasons why we love electric fence. It teaches our animals to respect fence whether it is electrified or not.
One of the problems with physical barrier type fences is that your animals have no fear of touching the fence. This puts a lot of unnecessary wear and tear on the fence. It can also result in other problems. They are itching themselves on it, and leaning on it. They might be crawling under the fence, climbing over or sticking their heads through to eat on the other side. This can result in them getting their heads stuck or escaping their boundaries. The predators tend to do the same from the outside and eventually could get into your pasture and harm your livestock.
Another pro in its favor is that electric fence is extremely economical compared to other fencing options. 330’ of field fence cost as much as the high tensile wire to fence a whole 5 acres. So if you are on a budget, and can commit to properly maintaining it, electric fence is probably for you.
It also is highly effective predator protection
The last reason we are going to mention that we love electric fence is for predator protection. It has been proven that electric fence is one of the most effective predator barriers. This might not be surprising. After all we use invisible fences and electric training collars on dogs.
Most predators are cautious about new things in their environment. They often sniff them with their wet noses before they attempt to cross them. This typically results in them getting a very good zap. They remember this next time they come around, and are hesitant to touch the fence for a second time. Their hesitance makes them even more likely to get zapped the second time. Getting zapped teaches the predators to respect your fence and the boundary so they stay outside and away from your animals.
So how do we properly electrify a fence?
We first need to understand the basics of how an electric fence works.
To start with we need to understand a basic concept about electricity. Put simply, we like to think of electricity as a circle. For electricity to work, it always needs to make a complete circle. This is true whether its a fence or a light bulb. If you break or fail to complete the circle you get nothing. Keep this in mind as you are building your fence and you will set yourself up for success.
So how do we make this circle with a fence?
Your fence charger sends a pulse of electricity out into your fence every few seconds. When the fence is on, you can hear the fence charger clicking when it pulses the electricity. So the fence charger is the beginning of the circle. When you touch the fence this electricity enters your body and goes through your body into the ground. It gets returned to the fence charger through the ground rods resulting in completion of the circle. Congratulations, you just got zapped!
As you might be able to deduce from this information, your ground system is equally as important as your fence wires to the function of your fence. Do not skimp on it or you will be disappointed in your fence’s performance.
Now, before we start electrifying our fence, we would like to note that there are two ways to ground a fence (complete the electricity circle). The first is the way I just described uses the soil and ground rods. The second way is to run positive or hot wires and negative or ground wires. In this scenario you must touch both the positive and negative wire at the same time to complete the circle to get zapped.
Now you’re probably wondering, why would you want that?
It might seem counterproductive to need to touch both wires to get zapped, because there is a much greater chance of not getting zapped than if you use the soil as your ground. And it is true. Because you need to touch both wires simultaneously, using the soil as your ground is more common, and usually better. Even if you choose to use positive and negative wires it is still a good idea to install a ground rod system.
However, there are some circumstances where it is advantageous to use the positive and negative wires. For example, areas that are extremely dry with sandy soil, and places that freeze solid with a lot of snow cover. Dry sandy soil is a very poor conductor of electricity. Plus, if there is 3’ of snow between your animals and the ground, they aren’t even touching the soil where your ground rods are. In both scenarios relying solely on on the soil as your ground results in a poorly performing fence.
Our fence design
At Snowdrop Farm, we have opted to use a combination of the ground wires and ground rods. Our soil here is extremely sandy and we are prone to droughts. As a result, if we rely on the soil as our ground mid summer, our fences are often producing a minimal zap that our sheep likely cannot even feel through their wool. For that reason our 6 wires from bottom to top are hot, hot, ground, hot, ground, hot.
This way there are both hot and ground wires at the height sheep are likely touch the fence. If one of our animals tries to push on the fence in a droughty July, they are likely to contact the ground wire. They will still get a good zap despite dry soil conditions. The bottom wires are both hot so that any predator that decides to sniff the wires will get zapped. We are less concerned about predators touching both wires. They will likely sniff the fence with their very sensitive nose and get a good enough zap regardless of the dry conditions.
This leads us to another important point
Your fence needs to be on and hot AT ALL TIMES. Remember electric fence is a psychological barrier. If the animals don’t get zapped, your fence will cease working. Likewise if your fence is poorly maintained and not providing a good strong zap, they can learn to ignore the zap and start to breach the fence. If your animals become tolerant of the zap they are getting from a weak fence, they may learn to escape electric fences. Then even after repairing your fence it might no longer contain them.
Even if your animals are trained to electric fence and well behaved about it, it is important to keep the fence on. Livestock are remarkably adept at knowing as soon as the fence isn’t working. Animals, particularly horses and goats, will constantly test the fence to see if its on. While it might take a bunch of cows a week or more to realize that their fence isn’t working, your goat will have tested the fence and know within an hour or two of it being off.
Additionally, animals that have learned to escape an electric fence should not be kept in electric fence with other animals. They can and will teach others how to get out of the fence. If you have a problem animal that does not respect fence. Remove them from the group of animals and either get rid of them or keep them in a physical barrier type fence.
Lets talk about actual construction now
First, you need to decide if you are going to use only hot wires or if you are going to use some ground wires. Then you will need to connect all the wires together with short pieces of wire. We use short pieces of insulated fence wire and crimps on our high tensile fence. You will have to trim off enough insulation to be able to push the end of the wire into the crimps.
Regardless of how you decide to connect your fence charger to your fence wires, it is important to make good solid connections. Do not just wrap one wire around the other. To complete the electricity ‘circle’ regardless of where the animal touches the fence every single strand of wire in your fence needs to be connected to the fence charger in some way.
If you are using ground wires, do not connect them with the hot wires. Do connect the ground wires to each other though. If you are using both hot and ground wires you will need to use insulated wire when connecting your fence wires together. This will ensure that your fence doesn’t accidentally fail by having your hot and ground wires touch.
Connecting fence on the other side of gates
If you have a gate and a section of wire on the other side that is not connected to the wires you already connected together, you can bury a piece of insulated wire under the gate to connect the fence on either sides of the gate. If you have stony soil or it is a high traffic area, it is a good idea to run your hot wire through a pipe or piece of conduit to protect it. If the insulation on your underground hot wire is broken or cut by a rock your fence will fail to work.
Once you have your wires connected it is time to connect the fence to your fence charger.
Your fence charger will typically need to be located indoors where it won’t get rained on. Find a convenient place such as inside your barn. It should be safe from animals, reasonably close to the fence you are attaching it to, and somewhere that you will be able to install ground rods nearby.
Hang your fence charger and use a piece of insulated wire to connect the hot fence wires to the positive or red terminal of your fence charger. If you are using ground wires repeat the process connecting to the negative or black terminal.
The all important grounding system
Next you will need to install ground rods. More ground is better. Most fences require at least 3 ground rods to work properly. They should be placed at least 10’ apart, and ideally located in an area that is always moist.
Ground rods are 8’ long, and may look intimidating to pound in. However, they typically fairly easy to get into the ground. Pound them all the way down until just a couple inches are sticking out. If your soil is too rocky to allow a ground rod to go into it, you will need to consider using a positive/negative fence instead.
Once the ground rods are installed, take a ground rod clamp and a piece of insulated wire (with a small amount of the insulation removed) and clamp them firmly together. Don’t just wrap the wire around the poles, use proper clamps so that there is a firm connection between the two. Failing to make a good connection can result in your fence performing poorly.
You can connect all 3 (or more) ground rods together in series (one to the next to the next). Then connect them to the black ground terminal of the fence charger.
Always test your fence before using it
At this point you should have a functioning fence. You can turn it on and test it. They make special tools for testing electric fence. It is probably worthwhile to purchase one. In a pinch you can use a piece of green grass to test if the fence is on. If you hold onto the grass and stick the other end against the fence you will receive a small zap through the grass. Be sure to walk the fence to test it at various points to ensure that you did not forget to attach anything anywhere.
If upon testing, you find that your fence isn’t hot enough (does not provide much of a zap), you may need to install more ground rods. When more ground rods do not fix the problem, and you have poor soil conditions, you may need to consider using hot and ground wires in your fence. If that still does not fix the problem, you may need to use a more suitable fence charger.
What you should know about fence chargers
It is worthwhile to invest in a good quality fence charger from a reliable manufacturer that plugs into the wall. This is the most important component of your fence, so it don’t cheap out on it.
In our experience solar chargers typically do not produce a hot enough fence for good long term animal containment. Also make sure you don’t under size your fence charger. It is better to have one too big than too small.
To have your electric fence reliably contain animals it needs to be HOT. You don’t want your animals to question if they got zapped when they touch the fence. You want them to know that they just got struck by lightning. Often people who have given up on electric fence or who have trouble with their animals not respecting the fence do not have a powerful enough fence charger, or they do not have it grounded well enough.
So how hot is ‘hot enough’?
That will vary a little bit depending on species and situation. In our experience the minimum voltage guidelines you often see online are lower than ideal. We are keeping sheep and poultry, both of which are well insulated. Goats and horses are less well insulated, but the also typically require a very hot fence.
So, on our farm, we prefer our fence to be 7-8,000+ volts. We consider anything below about 6,500 volts to be borderline too low. Below 5,000 volts and we need to check the fence. In the summer this probably means we need to mow under the fence. Anything in the 3-4,000 volt range or lower calls for an emergency fence check around here.
Our fence charger has a built in volt meter on it which makes it very easy to monitor our fence performance daily.
Electric fence maintenance
We just mentioned needing to mow under our fence causing the voltage to drop. An important aspect of using electric fence is to properly maintain the fence. Failure to properly maintain you fence is probably the #1 reason that electric fences fail to do their job.
It is important to periodically check your fence. This is an essential part of making sure the fence remains hot so that it continues to contain your animals. Make sure you don’t have broken insulators, or fence wires touching the ground, trees or fence posts. It is also important to make sure you keep the weeds and brush off the fence.
Every piece of grass touching the fence is getting zapped and is transferring a little bit of electricity to the ground. Eventually if you have enough grass touching the fence your fence will no longer work. The grass is transferring all the electricity leaving none left to pass through your animal when they touch the fence.
Training animals is important
Lastly we would like to mention an aspect that often gets forgotten. If your animals have never been exposed to electric fence, it is important to train them to it before you expect it to contain them. Do not just turn them out into a field with electric fence and hope for the best.
There are a couple ways that you can train them to the fence. It is best to train in a familiar area where the animals are comfortable. The first technique is to run some electric fence inside the current perimeter fence. This will allow the animals to encounter the electric fence with the barrier fence behind it leaving no space for them to accidentally escape the fence on their first encounter.
Another option is to divide an area in half with just a narrow opening in the center to walk through. Ideally you would feed them on one side and have their water on the other side of the fence.
When they try to cross the field taking the short route instead of using the opening you left they will encounter the fence and get zapped. In either scenario, it won’t take them very long to figure out to avoid the fence. Once they are trained you can move on to using the electric fence as a stand alone fence.
Fence baiting can be a useful training tool
Another aspect of fence training to consider is fence baiting. This can be a particularly useful training tool for animals like goats, and also for wildlife you wish to train to avoid your fence.
Goats are born escape artists and trouble makers. They don’t think an electric fence looks like much of an obstacle to navigate, and can be prone to hopping over, crawling under or leaping through fence. Because electric fences pulse there is a chance they may make it across without getting zapped if they are lucky enough to jump through at just the right time. Thus it is extremely important to make sure that each and every animal has had a good zap from your electric fence during training.
How to bait your fence
A simple highly effective way to make sure every animal has touched the fence is through fence baiting. To bait your fence you simply take something yummy (like peanut butter or molasses) and smear it on something metal (like a piece of aluminum foil) and attach it to the fence wire. They will come nosing around to try to find the tasty snack and get a good zap.
Now I know it seems harsh to bait your animals to intentionally zap them, but it is one of the best ways to make sure they understand to respect your fence. Take heart and train the animals to respect the fence and observe the boundaries for their safety and well being.
Its also worth noting that your livestock will frequently test your fence. So yes, you might feel bad about intentionally getting your goat’s nose zapped. But, if you sit back and observe their behavior for a while you are likely to seem them going up to the fence to intentionally stick their nose on it….just to make sure its still working. You might even see a group of them out there daring each other to touch the fence.
Thank you for joining us to take a look at electric fence. We hope this sets you on your way to success with this valuable tool.
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