Electric Fence

[thegawd]

well after the carnage the other night I have decided to look into setting up an electric fence to keep out coons ect... so I have a charger, its a Red Snap'r made by Zareba. it says up to 15 miles... thats pretty big... would it be overkill? now my run has a steel roofing skirt all the way around it plus the coop is steel as well. could this be used as the ground? then add the hot wire 18" from the bottom and say 8" out? hmmm im a complete newb with electric fences.... what about the wires? I guess im guna need some real electric fence wire eh? now what about running it on a timer? it dosent specify the watts on the charger but I have a couple 500 watt outdoor timers.

thanks all!

[Brebis]

The important number you need is the output as a distance doesn't tell you anything about the conditions I.e number of wires, electro net or overgrowth. For your use, it should be fine but the bigger the shock the better!
Don't skimp on a ground, a good solid metal post 4' in the ground is ideal. You can buy specific ones but any solid metal will do. It also depends a bit on soil type as lighter soils are dryer and may need more ground posts-at our old place we had 3 4' grounding posts on sandy loam for 50 ac of fence.
For a more permanent set up like this that isn't under tension, the 16g electric wire works well and it's quite cheap. There are lots of different offset insulators for this too. Too bad you're so far away, I have several rooms of it not used!
I'd also consider a wire on top too as it looks like your posts go up and have a bit of space...just in case something gets past the bottom wire!
I've never tried using a timer on a fencer so can't help you there but you can get inline switches to turn it on/ off without going over to the fencer which always seems to be Inside the fence lol!
Good luck and hope this keeps hungry critters out!

[WLLady]

you can also run a ground wire between 2 hot wires, and then if an animal pushes in the hot and doesn't get a jolt (dry ground or whatever) then hitting the hot and ground wire at the same time gives a good zap. my horse fence is set up this way because our sand is too dry to carry grounding.

zarebas are pretty good, but not the strongest fencers around-and unplug it in thunderstorms. i fried 3 with close lightning strikes.
to de energize the fence, just unplug it. don't mess with a switch, if your fence goes down you will have to troubleshoot your switch too, and there's enough things to check on a fence when it's not working.

[Bayvistafarm]

Your bottom wire should be about 5 inches off the ground. 18 inches and the coons will go under it. When we do the sweetcorn, we have one at the bottom.... and then another 3 inches above that. Gets them in the nose REAL nice.

We just use the thin string stuff. Works fine for coons.

[Doug The Chickenman]

We have it 6'' up and 6 out both top and bottom.
for a real treat I have herd of people putting bacon on it to lure them in for a good ZAP.
I have a solar charger which is theoretically good for 30 Mile but is it only about 200 ft of wire so it registers at 5000v all the time.
We use the fence as the ground with the ground wire to it as well as a ground spike.

[poultry_admin]

You don't have to worry about wattage of a fencer in combination with a timer/outlet/switch. They don't take a lot of power, even the bigger ones. They use a little energy constantly to charge the capacitor that discharges very briefly and gives the jolt.

You can use the chain link fence and the shed as ground return. I would actually ground it, too though (with the 4' ground rod). So that way the shed is not floating above ground (electrically speaking). If it were to, it could cause another shock for your livestock when they touch the fence.

The other thing I learned is that the fencers don't have the best protection against rain. And the outlet where you plug it in should be covered for sure.

The others all had good comments already, can't add much to that.