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ANSWERS TO FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS, PAGE 5 How Can Orchards, Vinyards, and Other Croplands Be Protected by an Electric Deer Fence? Farmers sometimes use 3-D or even single-wire electric fences to keep out deer. The danger, of course, is that the fence will work only until the apples, grapes, or other attractive crops are ripe, at which point the increased incentive will cause the deer to leap over or uproot the fence. If that happens, it may be too late to effectively reinforce the fence, and so the crop loss may be heavy. For this reason, most growers prefer to use multi-wire high-tensile electric fences that are tall enough to deter jumping, able to shock deer despite dry soil conditions, and robust enough to stay up and running in the face of direct assaults. For an example of such fences see About Our 6-Wire (High-Tensile) Kits. As all of this indicates, just as there are a series of increasingly challenging situations, there are also a series of measured responses to deal with them. To review a spectrum of these responses, designed to protect everything from small summer vegetable gardens to arboretums and vinyards, go to our Fence Options page and explore the various options presented there. How Should One Choose an Electric Fence Charger? Detailed information about electric fence chargers and their selection is provided elsewhere on this site. A good way to examine this information is to read the answers to the next three questions ("Why are volts important?" "Why are joules important?" and "What is low impedance?") before proceeding to Electric Fence Chargers in the Product Selection Guide and the Electric Fence Chargers section of the catalog. Together, these accounts will provide you with a good basis for choosing an electric fence charger suited to your needs. Volts are the electrical equivalent of pressure. They measure the urge electrons have to get off the charged wire and go elsewhere, just as pressure measures the urge of water molecules to burst out of a hose or faucet. The higher the voltage, the greater the charged wire's ability to shock some target creature that happens to touch the wire. In the case of deer, a voltage potential around 5 kilovolts (5,000 volts) will reliably shock a deer through its fur and skin, while around half this voltage (2,500 kilovolts) will reliably shock it through its more conductive nose or tongue. Such very high voltages are not dangerous unless they involve a large flow of electrons or are associated with a more or less continuous current. Today's "low impedance" chargers (see below) tend to be relatively safe because they produce very short bursts of electric output, typically lasting a few thousandths of a second, with the rest of the second being empty; and so, during the interval between pulses, a shocked creature or person has no difficulty letting go the wire. |