Electric Wire on Enclosures

Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 22:24:05 -0800 Subject: FEL-L: hotwires

>For exercise yards (not cages) it has been reccomended to me that you put a hotwire up at nose height. This will cause the fence to 'bite' the cat on the nose when they first investigate, and helps to keep them off of the wire. This way it gets less abuse, and they are less likely to climb.

let me add something for you amateur electricians out there.

Yes kitty getting zapped two or three times (every three or four months) will keep her from approaching that area of the enclosure (works on my dogs...I have a top on the cat enclosure....take the wire away and the dogs won't cross where it used to be????!!!??). I'm with Brian that if a cat gets freaked, it could go over a short fence (books say cougars, for instance, can go 17 feet straight up). In another scenario, Maurice Hornocker lost one of his study cougars to a wild male when the cat jumped the fence utilizing a snow drift that developed during the night....poor little guy had his neck broken by a suspected wild male. Make sure your fences are appropriate for the species and your location...just because it hasn't happened doesn't mean it won't. Your accidental escape lessens my chances of keeping my cats...please don't take risks.

I'll try to put the following in lay terms so all can understand. One IMPORTANT thing about electricity....it needs all three elements of an origin, a path, and a destination - any one missing and you got no juice flowing. The electric fence system relies on the earth (via that 8 foot long rod you gotta pound into the ground) as one of the conductors (the destination)...the other one being that metal nose wire(the origin); the cat is the path. Now, if you think about it, a cat in the air is not touching the ground....therefore it will not get zapped if it touches one aerial wire (a source and path with no destination). You need to alternate a ground wire and a live wire up there in the air in order for an aerial setup to work and the path (cat) must touch both to get zapped.

Either that or boost the voltage to a couple of hundred KV (destination being the ground again via a giant electric arc (air can be a conductor (path) with enough Voltage)) and the evidence in that case of an attempted escape will be a big black carbon chunk. };-) What I'm trying to say here is be careful to use an approved animal fencer, watch out for water (a path for electricty you don't want), and be aware of any health conditions your animal could have that could cause it die from an otherwise harmless electric shock. andy

p.s. consult a professional before you implement or seriously consider anything contained in this posting

Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 07:53:43 -0600 Subject: Re: FEL-L: Re: Electric Fencing

In my experience with electric fencing, we have it above the top of the fence, none below. None of our cats have ever been shocked that I know of, but I strongly suspect they sense it is up there.

Our biggest problem has been loosing chargers to lightning damage. We have to check the charger every time before we release a cat into an exercise yard. We have to remember to unplug the charger every night, because sure enough a thunder storm will brew up and there goes the charger if it's left plugged in. We probably lost three a year until we got where we re-wired the charger up to the fence using electric plugs, because even if you unplugged the charger from the wall socket, if it was still attached to the fence, lightning would still run down the fence, through the electric wiring and blow up an unplugged charger. We only loose about one a year now, just when we forget.

Our most recent loss (which reminds me I have two chargers being repaired, that I left at the shop for the past month! Got to check on them) Anyway, the most recent loss was when I had unplugged the charger from the house current and was in the process of unplugging the charger from the fence wires when lightning struck the fence hot wire and ran down through the charger and got me! That charger is dead now. It was a shocking experience.

Anyway, if I had it to do all over again, I think I would have opted for the more expensive recurve. Then at least we wouldn't always be repairing chargers. And after 10 years all the wire needs to be replaced - it's been spliced over and over and it's rusted the entire length. And that is a lot of climbing ladders for that project.

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 09:02:52 EST Subject: FEL-L: Electric fence

I've been reading the posts about electric fence with interest. None of our cat pens have electric fence, we have only small cats, Servals and Bengals. However, we are a horse breeding and almost all of our horse pens are electric. Over the last year we have replaced our fences with the Safe Fence Electric System. This is a white poly tape with wire inside it. It is 1 1/2" wide so the animals can see it. Right away the horses associate the "white" with "shock". In the past we had used plain wire without much sucess. Since the horses couldn't really see the wire they never made the connection. The white tape solves the problem.

I would think a strip of this tape around the top of a cat pen would be an inexpensive way to discourage kitty escapes. It looks very nice, is easy to put up, and doesn't cost a lot, although quite a bit more than plain wire. The system also has "lightning arrestors" that help save the life of a fencer.