Get the Most Out Of Your Electric Animal Fencing With These 3 Tips
Animal fencing is a great way to keep your animal organised and controlled. Whether it's for your goats, sheep or cattle, fencing will help you keep your animals safe within their paddocks while enabling you to manage them well. When choosing or setting up a fence for your animals, an electric fence is a convenient and versatile option you would want to have. To ensure that the electric fence continues functioning effectively, proper maintenance is required. Aside from the normal volt checks, here are other things you will want to address when you have an electric animal fence.
Weed Control
Overgrown or excess grass, bush and other vegetation touching your electric fence can result in serious damages. Such vegetation will often have some loads of water, especially in the early mornings, late evening, at night and even when it rains. Since water can conduct electricity, the weeds and grass may become relatively conductive as well; when they touch your electric fence, they can lead to short circuiting, draining power from the fence. This will reduce the effectiveness of your electric fence, which is why you need to maintain weed control.
Handling Frozen Ground
A frozen ground can also cause problems with your electric animal fence. Moist soils are better conductors of electricity than dry soils. During winter, frozen ground or soils will have a low moisture content, reducing or weakening their conductivity. As the depth of the frozen ground increases, the electrical conductivity reduces significantly as well. This means that the area will act as an insulation layer between the ground and the feet of the animal, reducing the ability of your fence to produce the shock that's required when an animal touches it.
To solve this problem, improve the grounding by attaching one or two electrical strands to your fence. These strands should not carry charge and you can have one of them installed at the very bottom and the other higher up your fence. These uncharged wires should then be connected to the ground terminal of your electric fence. The uncharged wires will act as a negative and a replacement of the ground, hence facilitating the production of the shock to animals touching the fence.
Handling Heavy Snowfall
Heavy snowfall acts in the same manner as the weeds and excessive vegetation because accumulated drifts of snow can lead to electric drain charge, reducing the effectiveness of your fence. Therefore, when installing the fence, consider a cut-off switch that will enable you to disconnect the lower strands of your electric fence to prevent short circuits and power drainage.
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