Electric Fence Question

[mousebandit]

Howdy. Need some more help with my electric fence. I thought we were doing good - had it set up around the corral, and the goaties seemed to be trained to it. We were just getting ready to expand it to the larger pasture and give them some freedom, when they started busting out like it was nothing.

Our set up is 4 strands around a small corral, that is about 60' per strand, plus a little more going to the gate - my hubby figures 300-400' linear feet for all 4 strands. The posts are big wood posts (like 8x8), sunk into concrete, with small plastic nail-in insulators. We are using The Wrangler energizer (plug in) by Gallagher. It says it will power up to 30 acres of multiwire fences. The wire is the kind that has 4 metal threads woven through it, like 1/8" rope, brand new.

I have weed-wacked all the brush around the fenceline except for the back line, which is about 1/4 of the total length of the fence. It has been totally dry around here for over a month, until last night we got some thundershowers and rain.

I have a little voltage tester, by Zareba, model RSVT8 - "designed for standard duty and low impedance fence controllers". It has lights going up in a vertical line from 600V to 7000V. On top of the body of it (where the lights are) is a metal hook and from the bottom is a long plastic-coated wire that goes to a metal probe, about 3" long.

When I first set up the fence, I tested it by going to a spot on the fence where there was another fence line intersecting it, and the other fence had metal T-posts further down the line, with wire panels connected. So, I figured the wire panel would be grounded, since it was attached to a T-post further down, and I put the metal probe against that, and the metal hook around my electric strand.

The lights lit up just barely, all the way up to the 7000V, and you could hear the faintest clicking sound with each pulse of the fence. I thought that meant it was working, and apparently it was working some, because the dogs and the goats got zapped and they all stayed away from the fence.

Then, last week, the goats started getting out every day, and my husband grabbed the wire and said the zap was REALLY weak. I have weed wacked almost all the weeds along the fenceline, and today I want back with the tester to test it. Today, when I put the probe against the wire panel and test the electric strand there, it makes a VERY loud click sound, and the lights are lighting up VERY brightly. And yet, when my brave son grabbed the wire, he said it wasn't zapping much at all. When I push the probe into the dirt, and test other strands, in other places along the corral, I get either the very faint lights and sounds, or no lights and sounds. This is true even when testing RIGHT NEXT to where the hot line is coming into the fence (the wire-panel-point is about halfway between there and the back corner of the fence, or halfway down the length). My son says the zap is weak, and feels the same no matter where on the fence he grabs it, or which strand he grabs.

I can't figure out if I'm testing it right, if my tester is accurate, if 7000V is enough, or what! Please help! The goats ate my entire garden this morning, before I discovered them out there. I HAVE to get them under control! I thought I was so close!

THANK YOU!!!

Tracey Mouse

[myersfarm]

I do not believe that a t post in the ground will give you enough ground ....i use two 8 foot copper ground rods 8 foot apart for a ground in dry conditions you need more gound also when it freezes..... take a 5 gallon bucket of water and pour it on t post you are using for gound let set for hour then pour on another bucket then check to see if that help the shock look at instutions on what your shocker needs fo a gound....TJM

[mousebandit]

I guess I stated things wrong. We have 3 ground rods (8' each) wired in succession as the grounding for the charger.

I was talking about using the wire panel that's hooked to a T-post as the ground for my little tester. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to put the probe into the dirt itself, or just touch it to something metal that was grounded, so I went with touching it to the wire panel / T-post.

Does that explain it any better?

Tracey Mouse

[Allan Mistler]

Tracey, Try looking at pages 36 and 37 of their manual here... http://www.gallagherusa.com/files/po...nce.manual.pdf

It provides a troubleshooting flowchart that answers most of your questions along with a 'what-to-do' to fix it if things are not operating properly.

[Alice In TX/MO]

If I read correctly, your fence is only four strands of hot wire. We were *never* successful using strands of hot wire to keep goats in, and we went up to seven strands. We finally gave up and got Kencove electric net wire.

Just my experience.

Rose

[fishhead]

Are you saying that the fence is connected to another fence that has a metal panel attached to metal posts? If I am reading it correctly that would be grounding your entire fence.

I would check each insulator everywhere it could possibly be grounding. Just recently I set up a fence and one single insulator let the fence wire close enough to arc to a metal post. I could hear it snapping but I thought it was the charger. Then yesterday I heard snapping again and found that rainwater had collected on an insulator and was allowing it to arc to a metal post. It doesn't take much to bleed off the charge.

[mousebandit]

I'll go through that manual, thanks for the link! No, our fence, ie the wires, are NOT touching any other fence - they only touch insulators that are nailed into very large wooden posts. One of those wooden posts has another fence line coming off the back of it, that has T-posts further down the line. ie, Fenceline 2 is a T-post / hog panel fence that terminates in Wooden Post 1, and Wooden Post 1 is one of the posts in my electric fence. The electric wire doesn't touch anything metal.

The funny thing is, that when we first set this up, the "voltage tester" barely lit up it's lights (although they did light up all the way to 7000V), and barely made a click sound, and it shocked the goats and dogs enough that you could hear them yell all they way in the house. We never actually touched the fence ourselves at that point.

Now, the votage tester seems much "stronger" (louder clicks, brighter lights) in one section of the fence, and yet the fence is NOT bothering the goats, nor my son & husband when they touch it.

Has anyone used one of these voltage meters - how else do you test your fence, other than grabbing it yourself?

Off to read that manual.

Thanks!

Tracey Mouse

[Jim S.]

Originally Posted by mousebandit

I thought we were doing good ... when they started busting out like it was nothing.

Yeah, that aptly describes my several attempts at keeping goats in with electric fence.

[caberjim]

Best thing to do is start at the beginning and breakdown the fence piece by piece. Verify your charger is putting out enough voltage. Disconnect it from the fence and put the probe to the + and the ground on the charge to see if you are getting full voltage. Then test with the probe in the ground and the tester on the charger +. If you are getting full lights, the charger is good.

Check the connections to the grounding rods to make certain none of them came loose. 3 rods, spaced 10' apart.

Hook the charger to just one strand of the fence. Disconnect all the other strands. Test that one and see if the charge is full. Test it from right by the charger and from various points around the corral. Do the same for each individual strand in turn. Hopefully you will find that one or 2 of them is not giving full voltage, meaning they have a short in them somewhere.

Shorts can sometimes be intermittent depending on weather, humidity, etc. The wires do not necessarily have to be touching metal to short - wood will pull it as well.

I would very carefully examine that post where the metal fence is attached. Sounds like it is bleeding off the charge. Did you put the tester to the panels themselves to see if they are putting out a charge?

If you want to verily your tester, there's no better way to test a fence than by touching it yourself. Only hurts for a second.

[flannelberry]

Testing yourself is really the best way. You know exactly what the load is when you grab the line.

I would agree that if the fence is not shocking people you need to figure out what's grounding it out. Somewhere you likely have a drain. From my experience with electric fences, it will be some little spot that isn't at all obvious. If there isn't anywhere and the bucket of water trick doesn't work (I second that one, btw). I'd call the company, you may have a battery problem as well. We actually have three different energizers and one of the things we've done is hook up a portable energizer to see if we get the same results. If we do then we know we have a problem with grounding. If not, we know it's specific to the energizer.

I would really recommend a back up battery energizer regardless of how this goes. Ours have been invaluable for that sort of stuff but also when the power's been out. Just a little while ago we had three days without power. It would have been a big problem without the battery one to keep everyone contained.

[mousebandit]

If I am pregnant, will the shock hurt the baby? That's the only thing that's been holding me back from just grabbing the stupid sucker, LOL!

Tracey Mouse

[Liese]

You might want to change out some of your polywire to smooth 12 ga hi tensile so that the barest touch results in a shock, I was told by one of the fence folks that polywire also has a lot of resistance, therefore less shockability. I don't know that from experience since we use the hi tensile for the "hot" wires. We also do not charge every wire. The bottom-most (#1) wire is 4 " up and not hot, #2 is hot and we alternate this way so that the goats have to go between a ground and hot wire. But I would also think that you might have to retrain your goats since they know they can get out. Getting them into a smaller space and making certain they touch their noses may get them to think twice. I have 2 lambs that I have to retrain, so it's not just goats! Also you might want to talk to Johnny O at Kencove, everyone there is great but he has helped me out especially well. Good luck.

[mousebandit]

Great - maybe I'll try the hi-tensile. Can I just run it through the same insulators, or does it have to be strung more like barb-wire?

[looneytunes]

Before you start replacing fence check out what caberjim said. If the ground wire is not connect the circuit for your fence is gone.When checking your fence with the tester always put your metal probe into the ground, that will show you the correct voltage from the fence. Walk the fence very slow make sure it is not touching anything metal.I also have 4 strands with a T S C charger that is rated for a 100 miles with approx. 40 acres fence,usually checks around 5000 v strong lights.Also have the 2nd to the top wire ground all the way around the fence,so far no problems.Running around 100 head.

[Jim S.]

All you need to check your fence shock is a screwdriver with good insulated handle, and maybe a rebar fence post. Any screwdriver will do, as long as the metal does not poke through the end of the handle (some do, so you can hammer on them).

Hold the screwdriver by the plastic handle, touch the fence, and move the tip of the screwdriver to any grounded metal object...fence wire, or even a metal post just tapped into the ground a bit. You should get a snap and a blue arc at about 1/4". If not, it ain't hot enough.

You can't get shocked holding the insulated handle.

[Liese]

Originally Posted by mousebandit

Great - maybe I'll try the hi-tensile. Can I just run it through the same insulators, or does it have to be strung more like barb-wire?

We have used the standard yellow insulators from TSC, haven't any experience with any others but I have seen where the wire is run thru thick plastic tubing that then is stapled to the post- don't know if I could think that thru well enough! Perhaps after making certain that your charger is putting out enough juice, that your grounds are doing their job, you might run one line and check it. Our fence tester reads a number display which helps trouble shoot. If our fence is reading 5 kV or above the goats will know it's on.

[ozark_jewels]

Well, if it was working well to start with, then something has certainly changed. I would start at your charger and check *everything*. Every connection, every wire, etc.
Also what is your charger supposed to put out, joule-wise?? I was told and its my experience that you need a six to eight *output* joule unit for goats. Much less for the average cow.
Also, poly-wire isn't the best conducter and I won't use it except for an inner wire on field fencing.
If you find the problem, you will need to re-train your goats to the fence.
Electric will successfully contain goats and mine are contained with just four strands. The bottom three strands are pretty close together and the top strand is located about a foot above the third wire.
Also. Do they have plenty of browse in their paddock they keep breaking out of?? A goat with a lot of incentive to escape, is *very* hard to contain in any fence.

[mousebandit]

Saturday will be my day to go over the whole fence. I should have moved faster to finish the big pasture fence, and put them out there once they were *trained* to the corral. There's hardly any browse in there, and I'm sure they were getting tired of it. I let their training go on about 2-1/2 weeks, and I think that was just too long.

Thanks so much for all the replies. I have a MUCH better idea now what I should be checking and how to do it! I will update when I figure out what is going on. I will also tough-up and check the fence myself by hand (literally, LOL!)!

THANK YOU ALL!!

Tracey Mouse
and Stormy, Daisy, Millie, Zephyr, Jackson, Jillian, Candy, Randy, Mandy, and Little Guy

[ozark_jewels]

Originally Posted by mousebandit

I will also tough-up and check the fence myself by hand (literally, LOL!)!

You DO NOT want to check my fence by hand. It will leave a big red mark on you and it HURTS. It also contains my goats, no problem. I used to check all our cattle electric by just grabbing it and seeing how good the charge was. Any fence good enough for goats, you shouldn't do this too. And I certainly wouldn't do it if I was pregnant. I check it like another poster said. Use a non-conducting tool to bring the hot wire close enough to a grounded metal to check the spark. You should get an extremely hardy and satisfying "POP" if its doing its job.

Let us know how it goes.

[chris30523]

Mine grounded out with a grasshopper. I found it by the popping sound he had a leg on the wire and the rest of him was touching the post. He was crispy but still conducting. Check everything!!