After Midnight In The Garden

While doing the morning chores after the wonderful night spent in the garden and around the electric fence a couple of times to find out where bull #105 found the enclosure lacking, we saw the bull once again away from his pen buddies in the bull pen. He had just exited the bull pen electric fence and was standing in the yard by the stock trailer on his way to the garden of delightful fruit.

While I got in front and turned him around, Mike went around the other side of the stock trailer and opened the electric fence. #105 walked calmly back in with the other bulls. The electric fence was clearly not working correctly or no animals would have attempted to escape a single time much less twice in twelve hours.

Again we walked the perimeters. We followed the line from the shop out the myriad of directions. We walked the fences along the inside of the various pens and fields. We tried back tracing the paths we had taken the night before. The walks began around the outside of the pens and fields perchance a grounding wire of some kind could not be spotted from inside. A few more areas that were heavy with wet weeds and small saplings were cleaned out but other than that we could find no reason why the fence was not hot.

Testing the fence every few steps was the next order. Mike was going the long way around the bull barn yard while another family member was going the short route toward him. A small wire had dislodged from a woven fence and had wound itself with a teeny hook on the end onto the electric fence and grounded it completely voiding all shock going through the wire. The problem was well hidden in a thicket of bracken fern that was browned from the end of summer.

It was also noticed that the control unit (that sends out the electric shocks) did not appear to show any issues all during the midnight escape and the subsequent checking of the fence. Closer examination was needed at the source. The controller itself was fooling us also because it showed green light as to be all good in effectiveness when it was barely sending a charge at all. I guess that a unit that works perfectly for thirty years has a right to simply give up without notice.

By the end of the day we had the fence cleared of hopefully all issues and a brand new control charger unit installed. The bulls, and especially #105, are respecting the electric barrier and the fruit is safe for now.