OT: Electric fence stories!

I have 3.

1. When still a young pup a friend and I went bird hunting. Now at 4' 29" (6'5" for those math challenged) I can step over most electric fences if I'm careful. Plus being that tall dad had installed a rubber recoil pad on my gun to make the stock long enough for me. So my bud and I get to a fence and I push down the wire with the butt of my gun so ole buddy could get over it without getting bit. He gets one foot on the other side and up come a bird........I got the bird, he still will not go hunting with me!


2. After I retired from the Army to the farm my kids wanted some horses (thank God they are long gone!!!!). We noticed that the fence wasn't working so I sent the 2 that owned the horses to check the far end while I check up closer. My youngest son shut the fencer of and we started checking. I found a problem, fixed it and thinking all was well went and turned the fencer back on. As soon as I flipped the switch I hear my son bellow! Seems he and his sister found a wire off an insulator. My son told my daughter to put it back on. When she refused he said "let me show you how a man does it" or words to that effect, grabs the wire with both hands........and you can guess the rest of the story! He still claims that I knew and just got him!

3. One of my grandsons loved to "help out". He would turn the hose on to water the cows all the time. He would be spraying water all over the place, bumping against and spraying the wire and everything else. I walked miles of fence that summer thinking there was a problem. Never did find one. Then it hit me.....2 months of walking the fence almost every day, he was always wearing his "farmer" muck rubber boots! At least I got a lot of exercise that summer!

What's your story?

Rick

Rick: This is not a good nor funny story: my brother and I
were milking one night, and just as her grabbed the petcock
on the vaccum piping to hook up the milker, lightening struck
somewhere out on the meadow near or on the electric fence,
came in on the fence wiring and it knocked him clear across
the barn driveway - when I got to him, he was conscious but
not making much sense. He recovered and was and is fine,
but it scared the h out of us.

(quoted from post at 23:33:23 02/13/13) Rick: This is not a good nor funny story: my brother and I
were milking one night, and just as her grabbed the petcock
on the vaccum piping to hook up the milker, lightening struck
somewhere out on the meadow near or on the electric fence,
came in on the fence wiring and it knocked him clear across
the barn driveway - when I got to him, he was conscious but
not making much sense. He recovered and was and is fine,
but it scared the h out of us.

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I bet!

A few years back lightening hit a transformer by my FIL's house. It fried everything plugged in and blew the phone off the wall.

While an instructor at Ft Knox we had students in the field. Bad storm moved in. One of our officers wanted to move the students into some metal bleachers for an after action review. Another officer refused and moved the students back onto the tanks where we "rode out the storm". A big oak tree 3' from the bleacher had been hit! And not 2 miles from where we were a NCO academy student doing land navigation was hit and killed. Not funny at all!


I was looking for funny stories of electric fencing zaps.

Rick

Night jump on a DZ somewhere in PA. Of course, the only flat land big enough for a DZ in rural PA was a cattle field. Well, we got everyone on the ground, linked up & headed off the DZ like good soldiers. It was still plenty dark as we got to the edge of the field when the city-raised point man grabbed that single wire bare handed! I never knew how big a flash those things will throw in the dark! So much for light & noise discipline! Knocked that boy flat on his @ss.

(quoted from post at 23:55:29 02/13/13) Night jump on a DZ somewhere in PA. Of course, the only flat land big enough for a DZ in rural PA was a cattle field. Well, we got everyone on the ground, linked up & headed off the DZ like good soldiers. It was still plenty dark as we got to the edge of the field when the city-raised point man grabbed that single wire bare handed! I never knew how big a flash those things will throw in the dark! So much for light & noise discipline! Knocked that boy flat on his @ss.

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LOL, know full well about noise and light discipline! For those that don't we started our tanks on a short count....that's someone on the radio saying "short count follows, 3, 2, 1" and then everyone starts at the same time so and enemy cannot count the number of vehicles starting and get an idea of unit strength.

Would not only have loved to see that but would have loved to hear both his and the officers/NCO's comments!

Rick

Years ago as a young man I spent a lot of time hunting by myself.Pretty much a Loner I guess.I was quail hunting and went to cross a fence. I didn't know about electric fences so I paid no attention to the single wire.I stepped over and as I straddled the fence the middle part between my legs hit the wire. My double barrel 20 went flying and my first instinct was to push the wire down. Dang what a rush!!! Of coarse when I launched my self off the wire the middle part between my legs hit the wire again. There are some moments in life you never forget.

A few years ago my wife and I were feeding the horses and I went out to shut the gate On the way back I was passing through the three wire fence, and just as I was straddling the middle wire she turned the fence on. After a few seconds of me screaming and wiggling, she comes around the corner to see what all of the commotion was.

Yes, she had a great laugh as I as getting my "parts" smacked with a 7000+ volt sledge hammer. Jeans aren't very good insulators.

We had our "city cousins", grab hold of the other hand, the one not touching the wire, when we were wearing our boots. LOL
Better yet was to get them to "P" on the fence.

(quoted from post at 07:31:54 02/14/13) A few years ago my wife and I were feeding the horses and I went out to shut the gate On the way back I was passing through the three wire fence, and just as I was straddling the middle wire she turned the fence on. After a few seconds of me screaming and wiggling, she comes around the corner to see what all of the commotion was.

Yes, she had a great laugh as I as getting my "parts" smacked with a 7000+ volt sledge hammer. Jeans aren't very good insulators.

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y FIL was seemingly undaunted by e-fence contact. He always said a "timid touch" is what hurts, so "just grab a full hard grip on the wire & it don't amount to much". He demonstrated this with every new grandson that came around, by grabbing the fence & then reaching over & touching the boy. Takes a bit to figure out why PaPa's finger gives such a jolt!

Been shocked many, many times by casual contact....no big deal, but still don't like it.


On myself: Water line broke under sink. Went running down to water meter to turn off. Meter/valve in a box below level of water from recent rains. While on knees in mud, hand feeling in water for valve and suddenly thought for an instant that someone had hit me on head with a hammer. No blood.....I had managed to touch the e-fence with my bald spot, while very well grounded! For decades now, I have always remembered that the fence is about a foot beyond the meter box.

I keep a 50' Craftsman rubber garden hose in my service van to clean A/C coils with, and one day I took it out to fill my goat's water trough. It was late afternoon and dinner time, so I left it and forgot to put it back in my van. The next morning I hurried out to coil it up and put it back in the van, but it was all muddy. I thought "Hey, I'll just reach it over the fence here and rinse it off in the water trough."

Well, good idea, but the electric fence wire runs along the fence about 3" above the trough. I dipped it a few times and suddenly the next thing I knew the hose was on the ground and I was trying to figure out what just happened. It hit me so hard I was blinded and cross-eyed for a few seconds and I had a headache the rest of the day.

Matt J.

About ten years back, I had a fence erected around my garden to keep the neighbor's Great Dane out and I didn't tell him about it.
I was in the garden cleaning weeds and his grand daughter came running up to the garden to see what I was doing. She grabbed that fence and then went screaming in the opposite direction.
After tracking her down she looked up and said, "That bites."

When we first got electricity we planted a rape field for the hogs. Someone told my Dad that he could connect a wire to one side,run it around the field and connect to the other side. Well it kept the hogs in and we did not touch it. One night we had a thunderstorm and when we went out to check the hogs the next morning we found our Grandmothers black and tan hound with the wire in his mouth, graveyard dead. Grandmother lived over a mile away.
Ironically the hound"s name was Sparky!

We put two hot wires on the inside near the bottom of a three board fence to keep dogs and coyotes out of the llama field. We lived in a semi-rural, large lot development area then, with some kids in the neighborhood so we didn't want them to accidentally touch the wire, one would have to reach in to contact it. The wires were places so that any critter going through the boards would have to contact a wire with about 10,000 volts going through it.

We were standing in the front yard talking with some friends who were visiting when we heard the most gawd awful squalling and yapping coming from the west side of the property. We turned to look just as a huge German Shepard was coming around the corner of the house running flat out. He never slowed and ran right past us down the driveway and down the road. Never did see it again. Must have gotten a face full of hot wire.

Another time I went to the very back corner on the east side of the property, this was back in the wooded part. I saw something hanging on the bottom wire and when I got closer I saw a small dead coyote hanging there with its back legs on one side of the wire and the front hanging down, front feet barely touching the ground. I appeared it hopped between the lowest and next up boards and got its front over the wire but didn't clear with the rear legs. It didn't have enough leverage to push itself back up in the front and the back legs couldn't touch anything so it hung there nearly upside down and died. Kinda felt sorry for it, for a second.

I don't remember how old we were but I might of been 8 & my brother was 7 our neighbor had an electric fence & since we didn't have one I guess from watching cartoons or something we thought if we peed on it sparks would fly when the pee hit the ground, how could it travel up ??..Well we found out what happens.We yelled & jumped around like you can imagine.

I used to amaze all my city friends by pulling my index and ring finger of one hand on the wire. I would explain how the jolt went through my hand and not to the ground thus no shock. It also helped that this was dry Kansas.

One time I got the bright idea to do it on either side of an insulator and pole. Still don't know why, but I decided to put the middle finger near the t post and see if the spark would jump. Did it ever! I still remember that bright blue spark jumping the couple-inch gap and the snap it made.

Luckily the friends weren't around for that one. Not a stellar brain moment.

A little off the regular path, but when I was a kid I had to trim the weeds
away from the fence, which I'm sure we all did at one time or another.
I used what we called here a corn knife and if they got too bad a scythe.
Being a "lazy kid", when I got my first dirt bike, a Suzuki, I figured I could
just tool along on the bike, hold the corn knife out and trim the weeds.
Worked great if you went fast enough!
That is, until I didn't pull the knife back in time to miss that one fence post.
Do-si-do.
Weed trimming turned into a pretty time consuming fence repair.
Bike got a scratch or too, so did I, but no major damage.

Well , I've got 2 stories too.
I rented 5 acres that had an electric fence, the
owner was new to the property and knew nothing
about the fence. I brought my cattle from another
property , my cattle never had been around
electric fences, my cattle kept getting out
because this fencer didn't work as supposed to ,
it would give a jolt every 2-3 seconds, too late .
I grabbed a hold of the wire to find this out, no
big deal.
A friend who I worked with had acreage and he used
an electric fence , so he loaned me his to try
till I got a new one. I hooked it up and it worked
fine , again to test I held the wire.I bought a
new fencer, My nephew (4 yrs old) was staying with
us he tagged along with me all the time, he sees
me holding the wire, he does the same, his little
arm just a jumping. One my brother-in-laws come
out to visit us , I told him the fence sure works
good now , Lyle ( 4 yr old) decides to show his
uncle Chuck how it worked , he grabs a hold of the
wire , again his little arm just jumps, Uncle
Chuck seeing Lyle hold onto the wire , Chuck
touches the wire too, except he gets a good jolt ,
lands azz over tea kettle backwards on the
ground. Did we ever laugh about that.

Story 2

After we moved off the 5 acre property , I kept
the fencer I bought when we moved to a different
house with no acreage. A couple of years went by
when my father-in-law who we visited regularly
complained about dogs parading up & down the back
alley where he lived were peeing on his tires on
his camper. I loaned him the fencer and he put it
up around his camper about hubcap high. 2 dogs
fell victim when they peed on his tires, went
yelping down the alley, never to return in the
alley again.


Stan
9N 222933
2N with 8N motor 8N345567
8N 146710
8N 179555
8N 197904
8N 199000
8N 254079
8N 362039

I grew up on a dairy farm. Where we fed our cows hay, we had an electric fence wire above the manger, going to the field fence. Us kids used to jump over the manure where the cows stood , climb up on the rail and slide over to take a short cut through the feed lot. When you stood up on the wood, the elec wire was forehead high. We had all done it many times, but one day my neighbor was with us and after he jump over the manure and climbed up on the rail, he forgot to duck and hit his forehead. He fell backwards into the manure. After we saw he was ok, we laughed. His mom did not think it was funny.

Another story, when I was in FFA, somebody told me that if you grabbed someone and touched the fence, they would get shocked, but you would not get shocked. I must have done it wrong, because I got shocked when I tried it with my brother.

Last seasonI had a ground hog that was very elusisve, I would wait for hours with the rifle to get him as he chewed his way through the chicken wire that is stapled to the logs around my raised bed garden. So one day I take the hot side of and extension cord and attach it to a bare wire that I strung alog the top edge of the logs and grounded the chicken wire. The dew was extra heavy early this summer and when old wet belly came up to push through the twists in the chicken wire...ZAP!!!! I wish I would've seen it, but he never did come back! Dangerous, yes but there are no little ones around.

Here is one. One summer i would guess in 1965 as i hadn't joined the Marine Corps. yet i was raking hay in a long alfalfa field with a single strand electric fence around it. I was not wearing a shirt and i spotted what i thought was a dead calf laying right under this fence with his head down hill. I shut off the old VAC and came over to see what might have killed it crawling under the fence above the calf looking down at him. Sure enough the "dead" calf gave out a big call to his mother and came straight up knocking my sweaty back into the fence. I can feel the shock and hear my scream to this day.

I was around 22 working for the telephone company in Tennessee. I was wearing three layers of insulating gloves (Required)while working on joint used power poles. I used to get some kind of shock everyday from the power company lines to the telephone lines. 90 AC Volts leave the central office to ring your phones, DC voltage keeps you connected on the line.
Going from pole to pole I had to cross several live electric fences, but I was not worried because of the gloves.
The last pole of the day and the last fence I needed to cross was ahead. I held down the electric wire with my gloves and threw my right leg over the wire. All the other fences I crossed that day went fine. This last one as I straddled the wire it slipped out of my insulated gloves and up into my crouch. I had held all the wires down for the other telephone Linemen I was working with that day but they all laughed at me trying to jump off that last live wire.
It must have hit my crouch three or four times before I got off of it.
I was numb down there for two days, It was not funny to me at all them, but I can laugh now.

The lawn mower vs the electric fence

Noah W