Misfitmorgan's Journal - That Summer Dust

So DH and I were having a discussion(argument) about putting up electric fencing inside of our woven wire on our new pastures. I put electric around our current pen on the inside on 5inch stand offs and a lower wire on normal clips. Some point during winter a sheep/goat got on the other side of the wire and broke it off 3 insulators....I fixed it....then again broke it off 4 insulators in the same spot....fixed it.....broke it again..i turned off the fence and said screw it.

So DH says obviously electric doesnt work at all and there is no point wasting money on it. I want the animals to stay off the fence and told him I think our charger is just to old and needs replaced/properly grounded. The charger we have is approx 8+yrs old, is a solar fencer and the battery died on it so it is wired into a car battery(works fine i think) and the ground is not a real grounding rod because its current location is suppose to be a temporary pen. I told him I just dont think it is strong enough, it is like a strong static shock will make your finger tip numb for like 5 seconds and it is only running approx 600ft of clean, new, clear wire. It's supposedly a half mile fencer so it is running less then 1/4 mile of its "normal" output, it should have no trouble.

So to that end what kind of fencer do you all use for sheep and goats? Distance, Joules/volts, etc? @Mike CHS
@Baymule @Southern by choice @Goat Whisperer or anyone else!!

We have ground rods in several places along our fence line and use a 75 mile AC charger. I haven't seen any of our animals touch a fence more than once, including the two steers. The new ram immediately went through it but that was our fault since it wasn't hot at the time and the ewes were in the next paddock. Once I got him moved back and energized, his first touch taught him to stay away. We run several hundred feet of netting and poly rope and have not had anyone challenge it. On most days, my tester shows around 13000 volts which hurts as I can tell from personal experience.

I would get a proper ground rod and try that first. Do you have a fence tester? Get one of those too!

For small areas a .5 or 1 joule has been fine for us. If gives a good zap. Sheep, in our experience, have been much harder to fence.

Also, I have never been much on solar chargers. Maybe it's just the type I've seen, but they never seem very "hot" and don't hold up well.

I love our patriot chargers. It is AC or DC. It has an adapter so you can do either.

Thank you both for the info.

Our sheep actually are pretty easy on our fence. The goats seem to be the most destructive on it. I will see about getting a real grounding rod. The solar fencer is not my first choice either, Dh's farm with his ex-wife was 100% off-grid and thats where the fencer came from. We have plans(at some point) to run underground electric to wherever the sheep/goat buildings end up being built but until then we are kind of stuck with a solar fencer. I did use a solar fencer for my horses for many years and never had an issue but it was grounded corrected and was a 25 mile fencer i used for about 2.5 acres of pasture fenced with poly tape.

I know it doesnt do well on our electric net from premier, we have approximately 330ft of net which is not usable atm.

Other fun stuff.

Our hot water heater has been leaking on the basement floor for 2 weeks. The furnace died on Sunday. The deep well pump stopped working last night, luckily DH got it going again but it is a matter of time. The truck needs some pretty expensive work done on it and the trailblazer's transmission is going out

Seems everything is failing, so we are going one day at a time. We have been keeping the house heated with the oven and a propane wall heater. Luckily outside temps are staying mostly in the 30F or higher area so keeping the house at 50-70f seems do-able.

DH got ripped the vinyl siding panels thats were covering the winters off two of the window on the shop which makes things much nicer and lets in daylight. He also dropped the top of the garage door that is on the end by the house(its not on tracks just nailed over the garage door size hole) so we have some nice cross-ventilation going and it will be good for summer to keep it cooler in there. We also are working on two new pens in the barn, the firs is done and has the two momma sheep and their lambs in it. The second pen will be for Ivy and charlotte and then phoebe and her kids. As soon as the sheep clear out it will be used for piglet weaning. Still lots to do of course.

Not sure if i mentioned it but we cleaned out the bottom of the 2 story a couple weeks ago and DH hauled off a full truck load of stuff that was in the 2-story from the previous owners. Now one half of the 2-story bottom is being used for chickens until we get a poultry house build. Atm we have 3 isa browns and 2 black sex links in there...the other chickens are still in the shop. We need to go in at dark and grab them only problem is they roof in the rafters of the shop

We have not started doing anything with the garden yet. We did get the entire shop cleaned/scraped/limed again. The outside sheep/goat pen needs to have to old hay forked out and then the whole pen needs raked. Random outside stuff needs picked up. Metal scrap pile needs to be sorted for what DH wants and put in a dedicated area, then DH knows a guy at work that will take all the rest in for scrap. Atm the pile is just outside behind the 2-strory and it for some reason keeps getting spread out.

I'm hoping to get our beehive set up as a swarm trap too so we can have bees again. We will miss the window on buying bees this year.

DH had a guy from work who was suppose to come help him take apart the dozer so he could see what clutch it needs so it can be figured into the budget but the guy flaked on him. It actually worked out because DH was working on trying to get the furnace to work again all day Sunday.

They moved my direct hire date/pay raise out 2 weeks

I think that's it.

When ya bought the house, did ya not get a home warranty with it?.....we made sure that we had one on this house, when we bought it.....hopefully things will begin to work out for ya....it is a bit depressing when things start giving ya trouble all at the same time.....

CntryBoy777 said:

When ya bought the house, did ya not get a home warranty with it?.....we made sure that we had one on this house, when we bought it.....hopefully things will begin to work out for ya....it is a bit depressing when things start giving ya trouble all at the same time.....

Click to expand...

A home warranty is not a thing here as far as i know. I've never heard of anyone having a home warranty anyhow. Some people do home inspections but since the cold kills most critters here and we don't usually have much flooding, we are not even required to have a home inspection. We are required to have a well and septic/drain field inspection done by the county and the water tested.

We did however know when we bought the place that the furnace and hot water heater would need replacing in the near future...we just didnt think it would be this near.

Google home warranty. You can get coverage for as little as $500 a year. So.....how long can you go without a hot water heater, heating water on the stove and taking wash tub baths?



https://www.consumersadvocate.org/h...MIl-uj-crX4QIVFq5kCh1C_wrNEAAYBCAAEgKb9fD_BwE

I found a link that has quite a few companies listed, then I couldn't add anything else to the post. Some I think are even cheaper than $500 a year. I don't know if there is a waiting time before you can use it, but it might be worth looking into. It could save you some money. Maybe-maybe not.

Your post reminded me of that old show Hee-Haw and the song;

Gloom, despair and agony on me
Deep, dark depression, excessive misery
If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all
Gloom, despair, and agony on me

It's about time that ya'll caught a break, and I don't mean a break down!