Deer Damage and Electric Fencing

[sharkey]

What! electric fencing for deer? Nah! That will never work.

View attachment 50703

Antler & horn does not conduct electricity. They soon learn this. Don't see much antler in this photo?

Cheers.
Sharkey

 

[cyberstag]

You are quite correct Sharkey, those are my adult hinds being strip grazed on stubble turnips with silage being fed as well in ring feeders on the ground already eaten off. I do this to avoid the ground getting cut up on the grass paddocks in winter. After the turnips I would sow arable silage and go back into grass after that. Very easy to move the fence about 6 feet every day whilst the hinds are still in the field. Works well for me but I know some other people don't like the system.

 

[sharkey]

They are nice looking girls there cyberstag.

Cheers
Sharkey

 

[The deer man]

Many thanks for all the replies. Looks like proof is going to have to be in the pudding! If fencing goes ahead i will give some updates.

We use a lot of electric fencing (4/5 strand) to keep Fallow and Reds off vegetable crops. However leave it up too long and they get to understand that all they get is a light belt and they're through! They learn, so use it and take it down when you can (easier done over rotating crops of course).

 

[nun_hunter]

Understanding electric fences helps in most cases, they are often poorly erected and not used to best effect, I remember tales from a couple of kiwis that had travelled the world demonstrating electric fencing techniques , my favourite story was keeping wild elephants out of sugar plantations, aparantly only needed a single strand hot wire as nelly is very curious they would reach out and touch the hot wire with their trunk, but it didn't take long for them to learn to pull the posts out and step over..

I saw a documentary years ago where they had a very low fence, literally 6 inches high but then had flexible bendy wires sticking off it that were about 3 feet long (think a hairy catepillar), this way it was too wide for the elephants to step over and too fiddly to get their trunks around to lift the stakes out.

With deer it needs to be visible 24 hours a day so they don't crash through it when running especially at night and also ideally you need earthing wires running between the live wires so if a deer hits it while jumping they still get a shock.