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Planning Guides > Electric Fence Options (2 of 3 pages) Electric Fence Options, continued One reason for the added effectiveness: the inner wires can run quite close to protected shrubs, giving deer good landing place if they choose to jump the fence; while the outer wire is far enough away from the shrubs to prevent browsing from outside the fence. Another reason: Deer have poor close-in depth perception. Their eyes are on the sides of their heads, so they don't triangulate well. As a result, anything averse (like an electric fence) that has a 3-D element makes them wary and far more reluctant to mount a challenge than they would be if the 3-D element were missing. Materials for a fence like this are the same as those for the one-wire fence, but one obviously needs more posts, polywire, insulators, and corner and gate accessories. For more information see About Our 3-Wire (3-D) Kits. All good things have their limits, however, and 3-wire electric fences that have to deal with parched or deeply frozen soil run into trouble. That's because dry or deeply frozen ground won't carry a charge from the target animal's feet over to the ground rod, and so the animal will fail to get a shock. One can remedy things somewhat by running a heavy wire like product 02-07 along the fence line on or just under the ground and connecting this to the charger's negative terminal. Then the charge will only need to travel from the deer's feet over to this wire in order to be sure of reaching the charger's negative terminal, thereby completing the circuit and ensuring that the target deer gets a shock. Beyond this are other problems. If the deer pressure is heavy, one animal-to-fence contact or another is apt to uproot posts, break a wire, or otherwise neutralize the system. Then no deer will get a shock and the whole group is free to enter. It's also possible that the deer will learn how to jump both lines of posts, and the more lengthy the fence the more likely that this will happen. So maintenance problems and jumping problems rise as the fence gets longer, and so does the time needed to periodically refresh the baits every 10 days or so, a task that requires one to visit all the baits spaced out every 20 feet or so along the entire length of the fence. Thus, while it is possible to install very long 3-wire fences, this class of electric fence works best when limited to distances of a quarter-mile or less. |