Electric Fence question ?

[Perry Holbrook]

So I'm in the middle of overthinking/engineering another project at the new property. I thought buying a few ducks for the pond would require nothing more than a little night time protection from predators and they could live happy ever after. No, I'm building a custom duck house for night sleeping and an attached fenced run with access to the pond. Working on it for the last 2 weeks at retirement speed.

My main concern is predator control, mainly raccoon, fox, and coyote. The house is totally enclosed and secure with pvc components. The run has pvc pipe as post, pvc siding skirt then vinyl coated steel fencing to 4' high. The roof will be wire. The perimeter will have granite rip-rap 18" wide and 8" deep so tunneling under the fence should not happen.

My question is about electric fencing. I understand the fence energizers are high voltage low amp systems and the wire is always charged with a pulse. When the animal touches the wire they complete the circuit back to ground and get zapped. That makes sense as long as the animal is in fact grounded. But what happens if they are standing on loosely piled granite that may not provide a good ground. Or if they have managed to climb the fence and touch a wire at the top but again are not grounded. Or in my case, are standing on a roof made of pvc siding when they touch the wire, again not grounded. I hope this makes sense and hope I am over thinking it, but if not is there a solution.

I'm thinking about a 2 wire system with 1 charged wire and 1 ground wire spaced maybe 3" apart circling the perimeter up to maybe 30". The run is 6 sided about 30 ft around. In theory, if they touch one wire they will also be touching the other. The install would be easy as I could run the wires thru the pvc pipe post without the need of an insulator.

Thanks for any input.

Perry

[Tom M King]

I was going to recommend looking at the Stayfix site. I see their chargers are replaced with another name brand, but I would still recommend them. We've had the same Stayfix charger going non-stop for so much more than a dozen years that I forget how old it is. The no.9 aluminum wire on the top of our horse fence is that old too.

https://stafixfence.com/

[Allan Dozier]

I have had Wood Ducks nest in the boxes I built every year for the past 15 years or so but I never saw any baby Wood Ducks until last year. Then never saw them again after the first day. We have had a population of Red Shouldered Hawks here ever since owning the land 35 years. They obviously snatch up the baby ducks at first opportunity.

On a side note, I have electric fencing around most all our plots here on the farm to keep deer out. They can easily jump over the fence but never have. It seems once they snoop around and get shocked they don't get near it. Maybe we have just been lucky with the deer.

[Jim Koepke]

Take a look at this > https://www.zarebasystems.com/learning-center/animal-selector/coyotes-wolves < There is also a link on the side for information on raccoons.

jtk