How to Know if Your Electric Fence is Working

It started with a cow – as most stories do. I was sitting at the breakfast table eating my daily fried egg and cinnamon roll, when I noticed my Pyramidalis hedge which parallels my west property line shaking violently. What manner of beast is tearing them apart this time, I wondered. The hedge looks the way it does now because the deer seem to find it incredibly tasty in the winter and they can only reach up so high. So, I went outside to see what was going on and there I found my neighbor’s cow chewing away on the backside of the hedge.

                Now here is the thing about my neighbor – he is the world’s worst rancher. There is a five-acre field which borders my property on two sides. The owners of the field live somewhere in Arizona and pay no attention, or care anything about the field or their house which they left. Therefore, since the field is up for grabs, the rancher runs his cattle on it.

                Now, in the summer this is fine since the grass is growing in the field and the cows keep it mown down, but in the winter, the cows eat the grass down until there is nothing left, and they look elsewhere for something green, which lately has been my yard.

                I do have a barbed wire fence around my property which is meant more as a boundary line marker than to keep animals out, but there are three strands on the fence line. The problem with hungry animals, whether cows, horses, elk, or elephants, is that they don’t care about fences when they want to eat what’s on the other side of the fence. The cows will come up to the fence, push the top wire down with their neck until it pulls the staple out of the fence post, then they will do the same with the middle wire, dropping it down. Then they merely have to step over the bottom wire, and they are in my back yard.

                One Sunday morning, as we were getting ready to go to church, I raised the garage door and stepped outside. In front of the garage door were three piles of cow poop. There was cow poop down the sidewalk in front of the house and my ornamental hedges had been chewed on. To make matters worse, there had been heavy rains, and the ground was soggy. The cattle, who circled my house all night long, punched a trail into my grass. There were holes all over the yard.

                Now, you would think that the rancher neighbor would do something about the mess, but calling him, he said, “Sorry about that. You need to fix your fences, so they don’t get into your yard.”

                “Huh,” I said. “Let me get this straight. I must sink hundreds of dollars into my fence line to keep your animals out because you aren’t giving them enough feed and they are starving. They are your animals, why aren’t you maintaining the fence lines?” And that’s as far as it goes. My option is to be an ornery neighbor who calls the Sheriff or Humane Society and turns him in or come up with another plan.

                And the plan was this: I would run a strand of electric fence wire parallel to the property line barbed wire fence that the cows keep destroying. I would place it three feet out into the field so there was no way that they could get close to the barbed fence.  This would cost me the materials and the power to run it, but it would keep them away from my yard.

                After a trip to the farm store, I came home with fence posts, wire, insulators and a stinger box which hooks to the power. It cost a mere, well, I don’t want my wife to know. It was an easy job setting it all up with the ten cows standing behind me overseeing my work. When it was complete, I plugged in the stinger and watched with glee as the cows each tried it out. This was the fence line on the north side of my property. The cow field also borders the west side of my property, but that part was closed off so the cows couldn’t get into it, and it was overgrown with tall grass and blackberries. The rancher saw this as an opportunity though, another way to keep from feeding his cows. Last year he came over and opened up the fence into that field to let the cows roam in the tall grass.

                During the summer, I noticed the west fence being pushed down. My grape arbor and the fruit trees which were mere feet from the fence line were stripped of leaves and fruit. My lawn next to the fence line was chewed short. So, I chased the animals out and closed the entrance to that field but the hungry cows, much like elephants, pushed it down and regained entry, which takes me back to my breakfast and the Pyramidalis hedges.

                I already had the electric fence on the north side of the property. It would be easy enough to attach another wire to it and run a line down the west side of the property the same way I had done the north. And this is how my day started to unravel.

                I keep my old farm truck parked quite aways from the house back in the trees just so people driving by don’t think that it is my main source of travel. If I was to go to the Feed Store to pick up fence posts, I needed to use it. So, I hiked back into the woods to the truck, and walking around the back of it I noticed that the license plate tabs were expired.

                Huh.

                No problem, I’ll walk back to the house and buy the tabs online. Getting back inside, I climbed the stairs to the office and sat down in front of the computer.

                The Department of Licensing web site is easy to use but the first screen required me to provide a license plate number and my last name so they could bring up the vehicle. The last name was easy enough, but I didn’t have the license plate number. I strained my eyes at the truck through my office window but couldn’t read the plate. No problem, I’ll go downstairs and find the title in the file cabinet. It has the license number on it.

                After clunking my way downstairs and finding the title, I slogged back to the office and put the license number into the computer. The web site kicked it back saying the plate number was in error. Ah! I have owned this truck for so many years, I have had to change the plates. Okay, I’ll walk back out to the truck and get the number. The upside was that I got my steps in for the day.

                Luckily, the license tab renewal store was right next to the Farm Store. Taking back roads, to avoid the police, I was able to pick up the new tab and apply it to the plate. Then, walking next door, I picked up 12 fence posts only costing me a mere, well, no sense letting my wife know.

                Upon returning home, I quickly set about putting the new posts into the ground in the west field, three feet from the barbed fence. Then satisfied with how the posts looked, I strung the electric wire from one end to the other. This was not happening without the full audience of cows standing around in a half circle offering advice. As I was getting to the final process of hooking the west line to the hot north line, I noticed a buckskin Jersey cow walk to the north electric fence and put an insulator with its wire in her mouth.

                Huh. I wonder how long the north electric fence hasn’t been working.

                Completing the wiring hookup, I went into the shed to get my voltmeter. It’s not like I go into the shed much in the winter, so when I opened the door and looked inside, I saw that all the tools on my bench were lying on their side and there were tools strewn across the floor.

                Huh. What has Cheryl been looking for out here. We’ll have to discuss tool shed etiquette.

                Now, the tool shed is not sealed tight and during the cold season, cats will come inside and climb up onto the plywood lying in the rafters. Sometimes, I’ll find kittens. It looked and smelled like a cat had been in my shed.

                I found the voltmeter and started straightening up the tool bench which may have created somewhat of a racket. Then, I bent down to pick up some tools off the floor when suddenly, something of great weight hit me in the shoulders. The four sets of claws in my back told me that it hopefully was a cat. The blind-side tackle from the rafters pushed me forward through the door, out onto the lawn. Lying on my face in the grass, I turned my head to see a very large feral Tom Cat disappearing across the yard.

                Huh.

                Testing the old power stinger with the voltmeter proved that the unit was indeed dead, although, there was a red LED light on indicating that it was working. Liar!

                It was 5:45. I didn’t know how long the Farm Store stayed open, but I thought that I must try, so I hopped in the old farm truck with the new tabs on it and sped into town.

                I was able to get to the store before it closed and I purchased a new stinger for only, well, I really shouldn’t say.

                Back at home, the cattle were grazing in the west field when I installed the new stinger. I checked it with the voltmeter, and it did indeed work. I watched a bull mosey over to the new wire. He stuck his head under the hot wire, eating grass next to the barbed fence. Then, he lifted it up and the back of his neck came in contact with the hot wire.     

                A startled bovine makes a unique sound, different from their other unique sounds. I’m sure that in cow language it is profanity. At any rate, he jerked his head back and ran into the center of the field taking the fence wire with him. The wire was stripped off each insulator of each fence post.

                Huh. I wasn’t expecting that.

                The rest of the herd made a strange sound. Possibly they were laughing.

                Okay, try again. Luckily the wire wasn’t broken and after shutting off the power, I re-strung it. Then after repowering the system, that buckskin Jersey walked up to the north fence and stuck her nose out at the north hotwire.

                “Don’t do it, Daisy,” I thought.  

She did. I guess she can figure out how to get herself out of that cherry tree.

                The rest of the herd made a strange sound. Possibly they were laughing.

                It was starting to get dark, and the last thing to do to make sure that the fence was ready was to weed eat the tall grass which could come in contact with the hotwire and short it out. I went to the garage and brought out my weed whacker. Climbing over the west barbed fence, I started knocking down the grass in the three-foot section between the barbed and the electric fence. In the dusk sky, on the back side of the Pyramidalis hedge I turned a bit to work the whacker under the barbed fence and I accidentally stepped backwards into the electric fence.

                People in the neighborhood said they saw the arc flash in the night sky and heard someone scream in possibly an Asian language. The charge only lasted a second, but like a near death experience it seemed like hours. I was able to see all the major network stations, as well as Prime and Netflix. There was a Spanish speaking show I watched but couldn’t understand a thing they were saying.

                Rubbing the back of my leg after regaining my senses, I heard the semi-circle of cattle making a strange noise. Possibly they were laughing.

That though, is one sure-fire indicator that your electric fence is working.

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