Electric Fence Help

[Morelia]

Gday,

I've just had a fence installed. Its 5 wires with:
Top: Electric
Barb
Electric
Barb
Bottom: Barb

I'm new to farming so the contractor installed Strainers, posts and wires. I'm hooking up all the electrics.
Anyways I have a gallagher voltage/amp meter and while testing the fence the top wire is showing 5kV and so is the bottom electric. The Amperes on the top is 6 while the bottom is only 0.1 amps. Is this normal?????

The top wire at the ends is where I attach the insulated wire to the next run. The bottom wire runs to a dead end at the insulator.

Is there something I am doing wrong or is this normal???

TIA

cheers

J

 

[dhawken]

Is the current running serpentine then across all the wires? Sorry, just trying to catch up a bit and envision the set up. The end of the top wire connects to the second wire, which runs all the way back and then that end connects to the bottom wire and runs to the dead end? What are the lengths of these? As an aside, what is being kept in this fence?

 

[creekbend]

www.gov.mb.ca/agriculture/livestock/beef/pdf/baa14s00.pdf Hopefully this helps.

 

[tcartwri]

I would hope you don't have 5KV @ 6A on the top wire!! It should be in the milliamp range.

 

[dhawken]

www.gov.mb.ca/agriculture/livestock/beef/pdf/baa14s00.pdf Hopefully this helps.

Read something from the Manitoba gov't? Never!!

 

[creekbend]

Read something from the Manitoba gov't? Never!!

I posted the website in regards to assisting the OP. I, myself, found the report to be quite informative in relation to Electric Fencing. Are you suggesting that anything on the Web, relating to context written or provided by the Canadian province of Manitoba is unreliable and contains false and inaccurate information. Surely you Jest.

 

[dhawken]

I posted the website in regards to assisting the OP. I, myself, found the report to be quite informative in relation to Electric Fencing. Are you suggesting that anything on the Web, relating to context written or provided by the Canadian province of Manitoba is unreliable and contains false and inaccurate information. Surely you Jest.

Of course I jest, although possibly not as good as your jesting here. And don't call me Shirley. Yes, that was a good doc btw.

 

[joshuabardwell]

If you are showing 6 amps, something is shorting out the wire. Does your tester show the direction of current flow, or only the amps? If it shows direction, follow the direction of current flow, testing as you go, until you see the direction change. When you see the direction of current flow change, you just passed the place where the short is happening.

Think of a short on an electric fence like a hole punched in a container of water. All the water flows towards the hole. That's the amperage you're measuring on the top wire.

EDIT TO ADD: Here's an article I wrote on this topic. Using the Speedrite Fault Finder | Jack-Booted Liberal

 

[Gary Fowler]

You will also get a more consistant reading if you jump current to all the wires at the charger location. You will lose current as the distance from the charger get greater. By making your connections to all wires at the charger point, all the voltages should be the same at any point of measurement.

 

[bullbreaker]

Gday,

I've just had a fence installed. Its 5 wires with:
Top: Electric
Barb
Electric
Barb
Bottom: Barb
s there something I am doing wrong or is this normal???
TIA
cheers
J

It is prefered IMO to not be running your hot-barb-hot-barb etc all down vertical altogether flush. Hot should always be insulated back(inside) at least 5 to 10 " with insulators so horses and or valuable livestock don't have chance or reduce risk of getting shocked and caught up in barb wire at same time. Or get confused and get injured not knowing if to keep going forward or back up.
Lots of good advise given in post(s) above IMO. --------------------------

Electric Fence Supplies for Fine Electric Fencing

Just some thoughts.

Boone

 

[BeezFun]

I wouldn't mix barbed wire with electric wire. If an animal is partway through the fence and gets shocked, it can pull back quickly and get hung up on the barbed wire and injure itself really bad.

 

[dhawken]

I wouldn't mix barbed wire with electric wire. If an animal is partway through the fence and gets shocked, it can pull back quickly and get hung up on the barbed wire and injure itself really bad.

Concur. I am curious as to what is going inside the fence. I am no expert on all livestock, but have never mixed the two and haven't had a complaint. Maybe we've been lucky, but we've never used barbed with horses, and only used electric with cattle on rare occasions.

 

[joshuabardwell]

I wouldn't mix barbed wire with electric wire. If an animal is partway through the fence and gets shocked, it can pull back quickly and get hung up on the barbed wire and injure itself really bad.

This is fine advice, but given that he's already bought the fence, and it's already installed, maybe a day late and a dollar short.

 

[joshuabardwell]

You will also get a more consistant reading if you jump current to all the wires at the charger location. You will lose current as the distance from the charger get greater. By making your connections to all wires at the charger point, all the voltages should be the same at any point of measurement.

I agree. I'm not really 100% clear on how you're doing your wiring, but ideally, you should have a lead-out wire that runs from the hot terminal of the driver/energizer to the closest point of the fence, then the lead-out wire should connect to the closest fence hot-wire, and then from there be jumped to the other hot wires using insulated cable. In addition to keeping voltage consistent on the wires, it also means that there is no single point of failure. In other words, if you connect the hot wires head-to-tail, then the fence looks like one long wire in an "S" shape, back and forth. If there is a break anywhere in the wire, everything after the break goes down, including the lower wires. But if you do a "Y" split/splice at the very beginning of the fence, then if any one wire breaks, the others continue to work.

 

[Domush]

This is fine advice, but given that he's already bought the fence, and it's already installed, maybe a day late and a dollar short.

If he loses a cow because it gets caught in the fence after being shocked, he'll be a day late and five dollars short.

It's never too late to do the job correctly, especially when life is involved. It just so happens this time that it will also cost more money to replace the livestock involved than to fix the poorly designed fence. So it works out whether or not you give two plops about the life and comfort of an animal.

Sent from my SCH-I500 using TractorByNet

 

[joshuabardwell]

If he loses a cow because it gets caught in the fence after being shocked, he'll be a day late and five dollars short.

Fair point.

 

[BeezFun]

So it works out whether or not you give two plops about the life and comfort of an animal.

Totally agree with that, it's a horrible death when livestock get wrapped up in barbed wire. Also a good chance kids can get hurt. We have kids cutting through our pasture and every once in awhile they'll take the electric hit if the fence is on. But if they pulled back fast from barbed wire they could easily get cut pretty bad.

 

[xtn]

Don't know anything about electric fences, but have had two barbed wire incidents happen on my property in the last year.

The first was my own son riding his dirt bike right through it. I mean the bike ended up on the far side but his body was still on the near side. Got quite a mess of nicks and cuts, but nothing that an active eight year old boy can't recover from in a day or two.

The second was some other eight year old boy just running into it on foot after sunset while we were hosting a Scouts camping event. He was even more full of holes but still nothing horrible.

xtn

 

[Morelia]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the replies.

The fence is holding in cattle. Particularly a few bulls. In this part of the world this setup is quite common. The setup was present before we had the property. Once the power was shut off the cattle destroyed a majority of the fences within the 2 weeks we were not on the property. These cattle don't think much of barb unfortunately.

I followed the gallagher smartfix in the arrow as directed and found an insulated cable that for some reason was causing a leak. I attached up some more fences and there seems to be slow leak ie 0.9-2 amp particularly on the runs over 100 yards.

Kinda really annoying as it will read 0.1 amps at the start of a run then go to over 2 amps in the middle of the run then slowly reduce down to 0.1 amp at the other end of the run. I checked all the insulators on the star pickets and they are fine. I can tell u for sure that the fence is functioning though as the person at the charger turned it on while I was attaching a fastener. Got a good whack!

 

[TCJatko]

To the OP: Help me out here. Are you saying that your fence charger will supply 6A @ 5 KV? If so, you should be dead if you touch it. Mr. Ohm says that is 30KW of power (P= I X E). To supply such power would require 125 A @240V from the mains. I'd hate to pay your electric bill each month. I'd check your measurements again.