For many farmers, electric fences are a very useful fencing system capable of handling many different tasks. Electric fences come in a variety of styles and installation settings to accomplish these different tasks, but no matter which electric fence you use, proper maintenance is key to keeping your fence functioning properly and keeping your animals (or plants) safe. You need to do the following regularly to maintain the electric fence.

It’s important to be familiar with the basics of how an electric fence operates. It’s essentially just a simple circuit. One terminal of the fence charger—the “fence” or “positive” terminal—is connected to the fencing, whether it be wire, rope or netting, etc. The other terminal—the “ground” or “negative” terminal—is connected to metal grounding rods that are placed deep into the soil, giving all of the ground in the fence’s vicinity a negative charge.

At this point, the circuit is not completed because the fence wires and the ground are not touching each other. To complete the circuit and receive the intended electric shock, it’s necessary for an animal to be touching both the ground and the fence at the same time. (This is why birds can sit on electric fence wires without receiving a shock—they aren’t touching the ground and, therefore, aren’t completing the circuit.) This is the basic principle behind all electric fences, and most of the maintenance that a fence requires has to do with this idea.

The best thing you can do to keep your fence running properly, especially if the animals have seemed to have lost respect for the fence, is to walk around it periodically and check various points and lines with your voltage tester.

Excess vegetation growing alongside your electric fence can cause big problems. When vegetation, which is full of water and therefore fairly conductive of electricity, grows up and touches a fence, it can cause a short circuit, robbing the fence of valuable power and wasting electricity. Ideally, fence owners should keep their fence lines trimmed and free of weeds.

However, this isn’t always easy, especially with large pastures, so you may also want to invest in a charger that’s strong enough to keep the fence powered even through vegetation, while still doing your best to maintain weed control.

For areas that receive snow, winter can be a challenging time to keep your electric fence running properly. First off, your grounding will become weaker. This is caused by two reasons: one, frozen ground is not nearly as effective at conducting electricity as the warmer ground that contains liquid water.

The other reason is that snow buildup on the ground—especially in animal paddocks where the snow may get packed down and become deep and firm—acts as a layer of insulation between the animal’s feet and the ground, causing a loss of conductivity.

To remedy this, you might need to turn one of your fence wires into a “ground line.” With this technique, you attach one strand of electric fencing, usually near the middle of the fence, to the ground terminal instead of the fence terminal, effectively switching it from a positive line to a negative line.

The idea here is that if an animal attempts to lean on or push through a fence, it will likely touch both a positive and negative line at the same time and receive a shock this way, regardless of how well the fence is grounded.

Another issue you can face in winter is sagging fence lines brought down by the weight of snow or ice that sticks to the wires. Keep an eye on your fence and tighten it as necessary.

If you use a solar panel to supply your fence with electricity, it’s critical to make sure that it receives as much sunlight as possible. Keep the panel free of snow or dust, and tilt it toward the sun as the seasons progress—point it higher towards the sky in the summer, lower towards the south in the winter. And if you discover your solar setup just isn’t strong enough for the size of your pasture, consider switching to a plug-in charger.

As an experienced manufacturer of electric fence products, HPS Fence focuses on providing professional technical solutions for small electric farms and home backyards. We can provide customers with sufficient product inventory to ensure customers' order requirements and timely delivery. We have established a comprehensive quality inspection system to control the quality of our products. If you are interested in our electric fence energizer, please contact us immediately!