To be honest, no I have not baited on my property. But, I’ve had one friend with severe deer pressure that has. They had excellent results. For me, once I put up the fence we’ve had one deer inside the electric. That poor thing was in a panic to get out, which it easily cleared. My main orchard is in the middle of a field similar to you. We do have huge herds of 20 plus deer, but they avoid the electric.
If I were you I would fence it off and go from there. I worry a lot more about rabbits than deer.
I had a chance years ago to observe a deer touching noses with my hot wire from my bathroom window. It leaped (leapt?) easily 8 feet up and backward, after which the whole herd (about 7) took a full speed flight. They had a deer trail 10 feet from my garden, and they left it alone for years after that. but the new generation does not listen to the elders, so every few years you have to have an event like that. I have always and only used steel wire, but I hear so many good things about electric netting.
I think baiting the fence is a very important part of the fence’s effectiveness. The instruction manual which came with my fence charger talks about the need of “introducing” livestock to the fence, which I think translates to baiting for wildlife. If you don’t bait then you are relying on random contact to train the wildlife, and if one deer figures out a way over/around before contact then soon they all will be trying it.
I believe that deer’s eyesight is not that keen. And even if they see the wire/tape I am not sure they associate it with the shock. Rather I think what baiting (and other contact) do is create an association of that general area with pain, so they avoid the area.
I don’t think most animals have any knowledge of electricity or how electric fences work. The possible exceptions to that might be bears and goats, who seem to be able to sense when an electric fence is down and go right through it at those times.
HI Matt, I think you’re right on to install your fence before planting anything. We did that and in forty years have only had two deer inside, and one of those simply walked through the left open gate! We never baited. But our two wire steel electric is on regular six foot field/chicken wire fence. We live in the woods and need to keep out more than deer. The electric is on only during harvest season, mostly for raccoons, the field fence keeps the deer out sans-serif electric the rest of the year. Hope your electric only works for you. Sue
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Thanks for all of the information everyone. I am leaning towards baiting the fence once it is installed. So far I have the outside perimeter of the fence up and will work on the interior posts during the week.
I started with the 2 row fence when I started my orchard in 2015. I have about 115 trees in about 1 acre. I put 2 outer strands and 3 inner strands. I have never baited the fence. The fence worked great until that fall when I started to see a little browsing and deer inside. A year later, it had 3 outer strands up to 36" high and 5 inner strands up to about 60". The top inner strand is the yellow stuff, the rest is steel wire. They still get in but usually more to feed on grass and weeds rather than the trees. I had a little buck rub on one tree’s branches last fall. I have a bunch of small cages on various trees and no cages on the rest, mostly larger trees. I have been lucky that nothing has really been damaged. Since I planted out some bench grafts and did t-budding, not having the trees caged was nice for working on them. If I had to do it over, I would transplant from the nursery and cage.
Hi Steve – We have two electric wires, both hot. The bottom one is on a 2" insulator at 48". About 8" above that one is the second wire on a 4" insulator. The thought is if a racoon somehow “steps” or reaches over the first wire they’re more apt to hit the next wire being out a bit farther. They’re both on a 6 ft fence which is the ground. Poultry netting on field fence or 2"x4" welded wire fence up to the wire, field or poultry fence above. We have old and new fence surrounding our acre garden/orchard. Old is on cedar posts and that area has some wire or rebar “staples” over the bottom fence wire into the ground, just for insurance for good ground. The new fence is on steel posts so that part is well grounded. There is a wire from the fence to a regular ground rod at the fencer (regular farm fencer).
For years the bottom electric was at 2 ft and that was a real pain keeping the weeds/grass down to keep from shorting out the fence. When we expanded and redid our fence this spring we put the bottom electric wire at 4 ft and that was a whole lot better. This has worked well. Confirmed, unfortunately, last month when our dependable mouser cat decided to climb a fence post up and over instead of waiting for me to open the gate. Now she won’t go anywhere near the area. Sue.
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Thanks Sue. I understand everything except this part: “Poultry netting on field fence or 2"x4” welded wire fence up to the wire, field or poultry fence above."
Does poultry netting have a ground in it?
Do you think a one wire ground and neaby one wire hot would work on a vinyl clad (not grounded) fence?
Steve, all of our fence is metal so is all “ground” for the electric no matter what kind it is. Since part of it is regular field fence with fairly large openings we had to put poultry netting (aka chicken wire) up to the electric wire to keep the raccoons from possibly going through the fence. We used 2x4 holed fence on the new part for the same reason.
I’ve no experience with vinyl fence but before we put electric on the entire perimeter of our fence I used to put up a short temporary electric just around the ripening corn with 3 to 5 wires alternating hot/ground/hot. We had significant coon problems. This worked. I know there’s a lot of info out there on how to wire for raccoons though so you can likely find some good ideas.
Thanks!
Electric fence questions, am finishing plans for a deer/squirrel/raccoon fence.
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For a 300 foot fence how many joules do I need in a charger? Gallagher main office told me one joule minimum for deer, said get Gallagher S 100. A Gallagher dealer told me .4 joules is plenty so get the S40. ???
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I will put a horizontal hot wire and ground wire about four feet up to stop squirrels and raccoons. What is correct vertical separation between the hot and ground wires so that Mr. squirrel or raccoon has to touch both at the same time? And what is correct length of insulator to hold the hot and ground horizontally away from the fence? I need to stop squirrels and raccoons from both sliding under the wires or stepping over them. I can’t figure out how to do both unless I add multiple horizontal hots and grounds on different length insulators.
Will be deeply indebted for advice on this.
My feelings are to buy the most powerful charger you can afford. I owned a 2 joule and 5 joule charger, and I hated both chargers. If the ground is dry, the animals won’t get a good zap. I charge a lot more fence than most people though. Another thing, no one will tell you this, and I wish I knew this years ago. If you buy a very powerful charger it will burn the weeds right off the fence line. This means very minimal weed trimming. I’m not sure how this will go in a dry environment, but it works great for my purposes. BTW, when I say powerful, I mean 15 joule on up. You need a lot of ground rods with that type of charger though. I have eight 8 foot ground rods, that’s 64 feet of ground.
As to your second question, I have no idea. My squirrels go in the pot.
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Ham is the fence solely these electric wires or is there a wire fence behind it (chain link, chicken wire, whatever)? If the latter, then I have had success with grounding the wire fence and running the hot wires on insulators just off the fence (they make them for chain link). If you don’t have a wire fence behind then I can’t say, as I have never tried to exclude those particular critters. In general though, I think the same basic logic holds for whatever animal, put it at a height that they will most likely encounter it, So that they have to touch it to get through, and bait it so that they will seek it out.
I’d second the advise of bigger is better. I rarely have heard of anyone complaining their fence charger is too powerful, but a lot of folks end up buying a bigger one soon after putting a smaller one in.
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Steve- there will be a vinyl clad fence behind the wires to comply with homeowner association desires altho if that’s fatal to my plan I will petition to have a bare wire fence. That would make it a LOT easier to zap the critters. Bare wire doesn’t last very long does it?
I agree with getting a powerful charger ,
An electric fence is a psychological barrier, not a physical one.
The idea being the devil lives there, and it smells like ripe fruit.
I have had good luck with bait stations , made of a small chicken wire basket. Tied to the hot wire , baited with peeled ripe apples, especially cantaloupe rinds, placed in the basket just befor dark. Do this befor you have ripe fruit on the ground .
To protect small seedlings a cage 6’ tall 2’-3’ dia. Of 2x4 welded wire is about fool proof,you can make a lot of them for the price of a “good” fence charger.
They are reusable for many years,must be removed when the tree out grows them. They will not however protect your fruit on a big tree like a electric fence will help do. With bait stations
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A bare galvanized wire fence would work much better electrically speaking. If your HO association would allow it. It could then serve as a “ground wire” for your hot wires which would be run just slightly offset to it. Since I’ve never done just a “strung wire” electric fence I can’t compare them to the grounded wire fence setup; but a lot of folks around here use the strung wire ones for cattle, sheep and to keep coyotes and dogs out. So they obviously work too.
And “bare wire” usually means galvanized steel wire (or aluminum coated), and it lasts quite a while, at least in the dry SW. Same water protection as chain link fencing an horse fencing uses, and they last pretty well.
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Thanks guys. I need to see if there is such a thing as black galvanized wire without a vinyl coating so it could serve as a large ground. That would be ideal.
We never had to bait our fence to keep the deer out. The problem we have is with wild hogs. They will gather outside the fence and seem to take a vote. Then one will charge the fence and break the wire with the others going in after it breaks the wire. They seem to take turns breaking the wire. It seems like they say it is your turn to get shocked. You will hear them squeal when they go through but if there is something they really want the electric fence will not stop them. We finally had to install a 6’ game proof fence to keep them out.
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@hambone did you end up putting up the electric fence? Is it working? How many joules on the energizer that you went with? How far apart did you run the wires?
I’m looking into putting up an electric fence around my veggie garden area…that’s why all these questions 