Electric Fence - Goats

[CobyRupert]

What ever your choice of fencer, chose the highest joule rating AND install a ground system of at least 3 connected ground rods. Grounding is the most frequent long term issue with poor performing electric fence (besides shorts) Take the advertised mileage rating with a grain of salt. The shock is reduced with fence length, insulator condition, weed pressure, conductor type, number of wires and configuration(loop circuit is better than a straight run).

One has to remember, that if your fence is not shorting to a post, or weeds, or through a bad insulator; that when it’s normally operating, there’s no real current being conducted. The fence just gets energized (voltage) on and off. With no current, the conductor type or distance doesn’t come into play. (There may be some brief “charging current”, as the fence cycles on off.)

When an animal touches the fence, the current then travels through the wire (for whatever distance is from charger to point of animal contact), through the animal, through the earth, onto the chargers ground rods and back to the charger (the loop is completed).
Only when the loop is completed does current flow and a shock result.

The resistances limiting the amount of current (shock) are:
-how conductive the wire is,
-how conductive the earth is (moisture content, material, etc..), and
-how conductive the animal is (2 or 4 feet?, sweaty? wearing rubber boots?), and
-the distance of the wire and earth from point of contact back to the charger. I think if you have a 400’ fence and a 2 mile fence, the shock at 100’ feet for both fences would be similar.

How to improve:
Don’t rely on only the earth for a return path over long distances. If you already have an existing fence, ground it to earth at several points along the fence (and at furthest distance from charger) and near the charger (or to charger’s ground rod). This makes your old fence the “ground path” back to the charger instead of the earth. (Current flows from fence to animal, to earth, onto old fence, and back to charger. ) Because old fence is “ground”, no insulators are required on the old fence. Because the old fence is metal it conducts a lot better than earth. A new wire, with no insulators required, can also be installed for this purpose.

Also, if you run your fence in a full connected loop so that there is both a clockwise and counterclockwise electrical path to the point of contact from the charger, it’s like the fence is 1/2 as long. That is, the current sees 1/2 the resistance (because it has 2 paths to take to the animal). Also, if weeds, branches, vandals, or a gate interrupt the fence at one location, the fence is still completely energized from the other direction.

 

[r porter]

goats and mules are especially good at squirting through a fence between pulses or just getting shocked on the butt as they clear the far side.

there is some super good info above.

 

[Jlblake]

OK, I bought all of the material according to the input that you guys offered. I am going to run two strands around the 30+ acres that the goats have access to. My only question now is how high should the strands be from the ground?

Thank you

 

[weldingisfun]

6 and 18 inches.

 

[cqaigy2]

Been many years ago having goats, but first thing we found out was higher voltage was needed, especially in the summer when the ground dried out. And a few ground rod 4 feet deep, attached to a ground wire running above the bottom hot wire.

 

[Jlblake]

I bought this charger:

Parmak Magnum Solar-Pak 12 Low Impedance 12 Volt Battery Operated 30 Mile Range Electric Fence Charger MAG12-SP​

and 4 ground rods. I'm running two strands around roughly 30 acres...two gates to go under. Hopefully this will work. Thank you all for the advice and tips.

 

[NoTrespassing]

I bought this charger:

Parmak Magnum Solar-Pak 12 Low Impedance 12 Volt Battery Operated 30 Mile Range Electric Fence Charger MAG12-SP​

and 4 ground rods. I'm running two strands around roughly 30 acres...two gates to go under. Hopefully this will work. Thank you all for the advice and tips.

Good luck with the goats. We had a few really nice Boer goats several years ago. I had a nice tight horse fence 5' tall and they managed to go under it quite often. I strung high tensile wire around the bottom and that slowed them down but didn't stop them. They were far pickier about what they wanted to eat than I had anticipated and were always trying to get out for better choices. I had a hard time keeping my fence charger running since the fence runs along the woods and branches and sticks would fall on it. I wasn't sad the day our Filipino friends came over and butchered them in the back yard. The backstrap was pretty tasty too but that's the only cut I would want.

Kevin

 

[cqaigy2]

Yes, i think that was about the voltage we used 11K open 7K on the fence.

 

[Alan W.]

I bought this charger:

Parmak Magnum Solar-Pak 12 Low Impedance 12 Volt Battery Operated 30 Mile Range Electric Fence Charger MAG12-SP​

and 4 ground rods. I'm running two strands around roughly 30 acres...two gates to go under. Hopefully this will work. Thank you all for the advice and tips.

Went through two of those. First one under warranty and its replacement shortly after warranty expired. Good while they worked.

If you have woven wire it helps to ground it to the charger especially if your using wood post.

From what my friends who have goats tell me, if the electric fence dont occasionally incinerate one its probably not hot enough to keep them in.

 

[Jstpssng]

I have this 3.1 joule charger for my pigs. Magnum 12UO - ParmakUSA. I run it off a 12 volt deep cycle battery which goes all summer without a charge. However, so far I've only used it to charge a couple hundred feet of wire.