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Fast Facts – Electric Fence Safety
Electric fences can offer a relatively low cost option to animal control and permit flexibility in the use of temporary or portable fencing material. However, misapplied, in certain situations they can pose a hazard to livestock and possibly people. Simple common sense steps and appropriate components can significant reduce the chance of injury. Below are some pointers:
• Never connect more than one energizer to the same fence.
• When possible use established gates for passage. Climbing over, through, or under live fences puts you at risk - and if you're working with goats, it teaches them that the fence isn't so scary and they're more likely to escape.
• Be especially careful to avoid body contact with live strands at head, neck, or back.
• Keep children, in particular those at the crawling stage, away from electric fences.
• Warn others that the fence is there. Along public roads, rights-of-way, outside property boundaries, farmsteads or other areas where the public is likely to first encounter electric fence
place warning signs on fence spaced no further than 200 feet apart.
increase visibility of these reaches (e.g., polymer coated, wider strands)
install energy limiter at feeds for these reaches
• Never electrify barbed wire.
• Where electrified offset strands are installed, place eight inches (8") or more from non-electrified portions of fence.
• Do not connect earth (a.k.a., ground) terminal of energizer to or
Great article on fence safety. However the problem with focusing on safety alone sometimes undermines the job that needs to get done in the first place. Unless the fence is quite small or short in distance I would disagree with the comment about minimal powered energizers being adequate. In order for the fence to work the energizer must be powerful enough to kill vegetation as it grows into contact with the wire. This becomes even more important in wet weather when the dry vegetation becomes wet paths to ground and the fence is no longer hot enough to do it’s job.