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I have a 4 wire electric fence and it is doing a good job keeping the goats in so far. However, we are very dry and I am worried about getting a good ground. I presently have the wire at 8", 16", 24" and 32 ".
More than keeping the goats in, I am thinking of keeping the coyotes out. Or at least increasing it's effectiveness by adding a ground wire in the middle. (i.e. 8" 14" 20"...Ground, 28" and 36").
Any thoughts?
Excellent idea. You'll also get a little more visual deterent, albiet a thin wire isn't a whloe lot. And, my opinion, you'll get a little bit more lightning protection if your fence should take a strike.
It might make a itsy bitsy difference in lightning protection, especially if the top wire were grounded but it is grasping at straws.
If you take a hit or even a near miss then huge voltages will be induced in all wires of the fence (like a winding in a transformer). At best, proper procedures for lightning protection would be employed but not counted on for protecting from a hit, just improved survivability from nearer misses.
Putting grounded wires between the hot wires will pretty much eliminate loss of performance from dry soil.
Lightning protection is both an art and a science in itself and is poorly understood by many otherwise knowlegeable electronic types.
Lightning story follows... I was called out to a fishinng boat ($10 milliion per copy type boat with helicopter pad on the top of the pilot house.) They took a little lightning hit or a big near miss at sea and it fried every semiconductor on board with its EMP. All the crew were wearing digital watches which were fried. All the radios were friend, SONAR, RADAR, SatNav, Loran, everything was fried. It fried things that were not even plugged in. TV's, VCR's, if it had a semioconductor (transistors and chips) it was fried. Luckily the navigator new and was equipped to do celestial navigatioin and take sun sights. A good thing because his chronometer was, dare I say it, digital AND FRIED!
Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]
Not sure if adding wires will help if there are problems with dry conditions. The main thing I see that would solve poor performance in dry conditions is making sure the ground rod is in perminent moisture. A typical 8' ground rod should do it.
The additional ground wire helps in dry conditions as it helps to extend your ground field all along the fence...as in a metal wire tied to a metal T post that is a foot in the ground...so if you have 50 t-posts along your fence it's like having 50 feet of ground rod..all spread along your fence and tied back to the start of the fence where the ground rod is for the charger...the animals don't even have to touch the ground wire to have this work.
I like having a ground wire as the bottom strand, that helps make any small animals go over it and touch the hot wire above...not to mention as grass or weeds grow up, they encounter the ground wire first.
Oh, I thought he already had one and was wanting to add another.
Actually at this point all I have is the ground rod in as wet a place as I can find. However since we have recieved only 1 significant rainfall since May, that is pretty poor indeed. That is why I was wanting to stretch out my ground. By tying to each
"T" post or line post, I would add to the ground and if the critters were forced between the hot wire and the ground wire surely they would get bit. Hehehe! I'm a little sadistic as all the animals that are supposed to be there are already electric fence trained.
Actually that might be doing the critters (mainly coyotes) a favor since I just got a new full grown Great Pyrenese guard dog. I understand from the previous owner that he has a real attitude with other K9's that are not properly introduced in the daytime.
I used the 3rd row up on my 4 row fence for ground. Being that I have wooden posts, I had to place some ground rods here and there. You may want to consider that in addition to your metal posts since the depth on them is so shallow. By the way, the T-stake pounders work good for ground rods too.
Back at the fence charger, I have three rods in the ground at ten feet apart. For lightning protection (if I am home) I have two of those large switches made by Dare to shunt both negative and positive to ground.
I used the third row for ground because we have horses. I figured that the top two rows would be the most likely combination to be touched. That only happens when they "horse" around because we always introduce a new horse to the fence in a safe place if they have not been exposed to electric tape. A zap or two usually does the trick.
Adron, I just attended a 2 day seminar (Fri and Sat) put on by the Oklahoma Meat Goat Association. There were a few hundred attendees and it included a nice trade show as well as exellent presentations and a goat sales auction started at 6PM Sat. Lunch, included in the registration fee was BBQ goat. Attendees came from as far away as California, Montana, South Carolina, and points in between.
The first speaker was from an international fence materials and equipment company. He was a horse person but his job took him to cattle, goat, sheep, and other operations. Some of the topics covered included grounding under our drought conditions. First, as stated by a provious poster, you need multiple ground rods, at least 3 spaced about 10 feet or so apart and sunk in the ground at least 6 ft. Recommended tool is T-post driver and then a sledge for the last part. The recommended ground rod is galvanized NOT COPPER. THis avoids the dissimilar metal corrosion problem. That is a minimum standard installation.
For drought conditions he recommended that you dig or auger a 12 inch diameter hole and backfill it with a mixture of your dirt, bentonite (drilling mud), calcium, and rock salt. Wet it thoroughly as you back fill, not just pouring a little water on top when through. In severe drought conditions you will need to dump a 5 gal bucket on each rod about once a week. Even better I prefer placing at least a 5 gal bucket by each rod. make a small hole in the bottom of these buckets so they drip their contents over a protracted period and the water doesn't run off. Don't over back fill, leave a depression to take the water efficiently. Put a cinder block or a couple rocks in the buckets so they don't blow away when empty.
He recommended the wire spacing for goats to be 4-6 inches above the ground for the first wire and then 4-6 inches spacing for the 2nd and 3rd wires. You can go to wider spacing above that. This is not only a containment fence but an exclusion fence for predators. Although the goats may learn to respect a modest jolt from a middle of the road charger, for predator exclusion you need to consider (in the words of Tim the Toolman Taylor) MORE POWER. Manufacturers rate their chargers differently but a good criteria is output joules. (NOT STORAGE JOULES BUT OUTPUT)
I personally am considering a bipolar charger that charges alternate wires with opposite polarity. Contacting either single wire will get you a "standard" jolt with respect to ground but if the animal touches two adjacent wires they get twice the voltage. If for some reason the animal doesn't respect the single dose, the double dose can really get their attention. Handy for predator exclusion as well as stock containment.
Of interest to folks in Oklahoma, and maybe nearby states, the goat slaughter house in Goldsby, Oklahoma that was relatively recently sold and went out of business has been bought back by the previous owner and is expected to open in about 6 weeks. They used to intake 750-1500 goats per week and will probably build back to that level fairly soon do to increased demand. Import of goat to the US, principly from New Zealand in the form of frozen carcasses, has nearly doubled in the last 5 years so why not provide a "better" product locally. Goat turns dark when shipped frozen, a cosmetic disadvantage to the primary clientele. A big share of goats taken in at Goldsby are trucked to New Jersey, Delaware, Rhode Island, New York, and Pennsylvania live for local slaughter near the point of consumption.
I was suprised to learn that Texas is #1 in Goat production in the US and again to learn that Oklahoma is #5. I guess goats are more popular than I realized, Tennessee is way ahead of Oklahoma in goat production and is favorabley positioned near the north eastern markets.
We'll know goat has arrived when we see goat jerky on the convenience store counter with the beef jerky and when Taco Bell and others has cabrita fajita.
Pat
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