Electric fence for animal protection
Most of the time, when people think of an electric fence, they think of something that is designed to keep an animal inside. Prison yards have electric security fences around them to help deter inmates from trying to escape. There are people who build an electric fence around their property in order to protect the animals they keep inside the fence.
A cow is a very stubborn animal. Barbed wire is the most widely used material for the construction of enclosures that maintain herds of cows. When a cow runs into barbed wire, it can be badly cut. In remote areas, the animal can be seriously injured and succumb to those injuries before the owner discovers them.
Placing an electric fence where a barbed wire fence once existed will help protect cows from being injured by the fence material. Animals can smell electricity and are less likely to try to push a fence that is electrically charged, but when they do, they will receive an electric shock. The impact will be enough to get your attention, but not enough to cause any real harm to the animal. The wire through which the electrical charge passes will not cut the animal.
Electric fencing can also be used to make sure predators don’t get into an animal’s enclosure and kill it. A chicken is a defenseless animal. In the wild, the chicken can fly up into the treetops for protection from foxes, raccoons, opossums, and mink. When the chicken is cooped up in a coop, it can no longer fly to the safety of the trees to hide from these predators. The predator can simply break the wire around the enclosure and kill the chickens. If the fence is electrically charged, predators cannot break through it and kill the chickens as easily.
Chicken coops can be protected with these fences, but you can also place them around enclosures that hold whelping animals and rabbit hutches, or around the home of any animal that has had its natural defenses removed because a human penned it up.
Many people don’t think about these fences because their property is so remote that they don’t have the ability to connect the fence hardware to an electrical power source. Technology has given these people the solar powered electric fence hardware. You don’t need to have a power source on hand because the solar panel will generate its own electricity and recharge the fence every day.
This means that these fences can be placed around any animal enclosure, no matter how remote the enclosure. People have the ability to protect the animals in their care, and that is what we should be doing. When we remove an animal from its natural habitat and confine it, we accept responsibility for its food, shelter, and care. Your safety is our concern.