# Goats and electric fence



## mitchea2 (Apr 24, 2014)

I am trying this as a last resort. I have spent two years and hundreds of dollars trying to create an a fence that will hold my 6 goats. I was resigned to having free range goats and trying to fence my self a goat free area, but now they have discovered a neighboring alfalfa field. It's either create a fence that holds the goats or no goats. 


I have had 6 strand electric fence and every lesser version and a 4 foot woven wire. 

We need to stay electric in order to give them a large enough space to enjoy. 


The goats always go over, under or thru. I can usually visually see them get shocked but they just continue to move forward. 

I thought I needed a high voltage fencer so I bought a few at an auction. 

I have a grounding system. 3 rods 4 feet apart, live near a gravel put, so maybe 5 feet deep each. 

The wire is spliced but with the actual connectors 

My current charger cost like 75 dollars. 

Questions: 

Will going to buy the most expensive charger at fleet farm help?

Is my grounding ok?

Is splicing the wire okay if I used the reconnect it's?

I heard that a closed loop system will help with voltage drop. But I can't understand how to do this. I put my wire from charger on one side of the gate jump to the other lines. Then end with looped around white doughnut insulators at he other side of the gate.


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## Damfino (Dec 29, 2013)

A good hot fence should knock their socks off and keep them from ever wanting to touch it again. Almost all problems with electric fences are with the grounding system. I use 8-foot ground rods spaced 10 feet apart. Gravelly soil may need more. Try to place them in an area that collects moisture (like at the bottom of a slight dip) or else near your water source. When you fill the water trough you can water the ground rods while you're at it. Get a five-light fence tester to see how hot the fence actually is. It should light up all five lights everywhere along your fence. Make sure nothing is grounding it out at any point. If you use a fence with no vertical strands your goats may have learned to leap through quickly between pulses. A mesh fence will prevent this. It should be at least 4 feet high.

Some people will train their goats to the electric fence by putting tin foil coated in peanut butter on the wire. When the goats go to lick the peanut butter they get a good jolt and won't touch it again. But you must make sure your fence is hot enough to make them think they've been struck by lightening. Most goats will cry out in pain when they touch it if it's hot enough (you would too!). A wimpy electric fence is no fence at all. Good luck!


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## kccjer (Jan 27, 2012)

A $75 charger isn't going to have much shock power. You need one with more joules which means more money too. If you only have the one charger and 6 strands of wire you're spreading it pretty thin. The longer the jolt has to travel the more power it will lose.


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## chelsboers (Mar 25, 2010)

Have you tested your fence? How many volts does it give off? What did you use for grounding rods? 
This is the one I have
http://www.zarebasystems.com/store/electric-fence-chargers/eac50m-z


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## Tenacross (May 26, 2011)

You might try copper wire for the charger-to-ground wire. That helped me a little. It doesn't matter how much you pay for the charger if the ground isn't right. I tried that and ended up taking the expensive charger back as it didn't do any better. When I got the groud right, it was hot with my old charger. What you described should have been pretty good though, so not sure.


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## MsScamp (Feb 1, 2010)

How are you spacing your wires?


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## mitchea2 (Apr 24, 2014)

So I went and got a voltage reader. No noticeable readings any where on fence. Before charger is on fence all five lights. Add to fence nothing. 

I have really scrutinize every inch of the fence. No grass, grounds, split wires bad insulators. 

I believe it must be one of three things. 

1). My grounding system. We live on the same hill a a gravel pit ( limestone). We bought the ground kit at flet farm. 


Could a bad ground cause no readable voltage on the meter? How about contact with rock, we may have pounded the ground into rock, as we pounded as far as they would go then cut off top?


If so, is it possible to hold goats with the ground / hot alternating fence. 

2) could it be the charger? I didn't think so as it shows all five lights before I hook it to the fence. 


3). When I built the fence I ended the wire at each corner post and started a new one. Both on the same dounut insulator. Is this wrong? 


I really appreciate your help. As the frame had lost all patience.


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## chelsboers (Mar 25, 2010)

If it is working before you connect it to your fence then it's not your charger, you're grounding out somewhere. If the fence isn't touching anything then it must be your grounding rods. My husband did the fence so I'm not sure if a rock hitting the rod would affect it but I wouldn't think so. We have really rocky ground and don't have a problem. Is there anywhere the fence is touching the posts? You used the plastic insulators, right? I'm just throwing things out there.
The ends of our fence each has it's own tightener thing ( http://www.zarebasystems.com/store/electric-fence-high-tensile/b400-399 )so I don't know about the donut things.

I read that wrong the tightener is at the end of our fence not the corners.
Have you read this 
https://www.afence.com/Electric_Fence/how_to_elecfence/elecinstall.htm
It helped me when I installed our fence


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## kccjer (Jan 27, 2012)

I am going to go with your grounding system. Rock won't have as much ground as plain old dirt. Is there anywhere along the fence where you have what is basically dirt and not a lot of rocks? If so, I'd put some grounds in there. How many grounds do you have? For our 12 mile fencer, we are suppose to have no less than 4 grounds and they say that more is better. You should be ok on the donut insulators as that's what we've used for years and it sounds like you are ok there. You ARE connected to the fence at each corner....right? I have to throw that out there cause we just couldn't figure out why ours wasn't working and discovered we hadn't actually attached it to the fence at one spot near the beginning. :roll:


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## mitchea2 (Apr 24, 2014)

Defiantly no place the wire is touching posts or each other. Used the yellow plastic insulators on t posts. White rounds one corners. 

I have three rods sunk as far as they would go before they hit solid rock about 4 feet. 
Connected together with the wire and nuts which came with the system and buried that wire about 1 foot down. 

Because the fence has been up and down so often we didn't have any super Long pieces. 

It's hard to explain but at each corner post I tied it off like where I started or ended. Then started a new piece making sure I wrapped around the tied off piece creating sort of a triangle at each round dounut insulator. Could this be the problem? Some sort of reversal or something.


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## kccjer (Jan 27, 2012)

I'm trying to picture it in my mind. Are you sure you are tied into each piece of wire as it goes around a corner? There shouldn't be any reversal. If what you did is what I'm picturing, that's correct. Try pouring some water where your grounds are.


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## GoatGirlZ (Apr 24, 2014)

so i dont know if this info is helpfull or not but make sure if you do do an electric fence make sure you keep it on at all times even if youn think they wont touch it agian they can hear they electric volt pulsing through it i know because our goats as soon as we turn it off tey race through it


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## goatygirl (Feb 16, 2013)

We have fencing like this for all our animals it has never failed us.


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## LaurieW (Sep 24, 2013)

Our property is mostly on a hill, with an abandoned gravel pit next to it. In a section of my veggie garden there is gravel. It does not seem to effect our electric fence.

I would suggest a low impedance charger, then when grass or anything touches it, it does not ground out so easily. As we expanded we had to change our grounding rod set up and location. We have 3 roads about 3 feet apart, very near the charger box. We use 5 strands (14 gauge tensile wire), 1, 3 and 5 are hot while 2 and 4 are connected to the ground.

We also connect all the wires to each other at the gates and run the hot wire under (using insulated wire). We have been really pleased with our system, and the readings are really high.

As to connecting/splicing -- We were worried about some areas where we expanding, but the connections/splices as it turned out are good and did not effect the flow of electricity. 
We have one section we changed to crimp connections, no improvement/change in electric flow. 
I wonder if the connections at the corners could be part of the problem. I would try to connect/splice on a straight part of the wire so that the current has less trouble in the flow.

Here is how we spliced ours when we expanding our fencing. And from all my research this is one of the top 3 ways to splice.






When we did have problems (after an expansion) it all came back to our grounding rods. They were originally good, but once we expanded they were not and had to move closer to the charger box, added the 3rd grounding rod. We have a Zareba box with low impendence.

Here is a webpage we referenced when putting in our electric fence, which might be helpful - 
http://www.swampyacresfarm.com/ElectricGoatFence.html

Are you using a high gauge tensile wire? We use 14 gauge. I know another goat breeder with a herd of 40ish does that uses the wide poly tape, with good success.

By the way, here is our charger, when we first hooked it up next to the gate. And our connections of hot wires and ground wires to each other, with a buried insulated wire under the gate.

Finishing Fence & Gate by LaurieESW, on Flickr

Closer photo of wire connections.

Electric Fence Connections by LaurieESW, on Flickr


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## Damfino (Dec 29, 2013)

If there is solid rock 4' under the ground, then you should probably pound your ground rods in at an angle so that more of them is underground. See what happens when you pour water on your ground rods. Another thing you can try is to disconnect your fence like at a gate or someplace easy and try heating a shorter stretch. If it heats the shorter part, it could be you've got too much fence for your ground, or it could isolate your problem to a particular section of fence. Seven strands is a lot to heat if you have a big pasture.


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## crzybowhntr (Oct 18, 2013)

You NEED a larger charger for those goats. I run an 18 joule charger made by Power Wizard. You can buy them on EBAY for about $300. It keeps all 6 of my 12 gauge high tensile fence wires at +/- 7k volts and I have about 16k feet of it to charge not including cross-fencing and tying into the main fence for the garden. I am going to unhook the top 2 lines tonight in order to see if it will allow more voltage to the bottom 4 before I begin weaning.

It sounds like you have a grounding issue or too small a charger. If your fence is like mine and you have your individual lines spliced together like LaurieW has in her last pic maybe you could try unhooking them one by one until you get a good reading and then you most likely will find your fault.

I`m not too confident that your grounding is the issue but before you do more testing wet the area around the rods down real well if you can.


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## crzybowhntr (Oct 18, 2013)

goatygirl said:


> We have fencing like this for all our animals it has never failed us.


No wonder it works, they can`t see where to walk!


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## LaurieW (Sep 24, 2013)

crzybowhntr said:


> No wonder it works, they can`t see where to walk!


:ROFL: Now I know what to do with any trouble makers! Blindfold them. ;-)


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