Hooking up the Electric Fence

It's funny what you take for granted when you are young. I went to set up electric fence with Steve and ummm...wait, surprise, we have no idea what we are doing.

So lets do a little tutorial!

First off you have your ground rod that goes into the ground (should be like 3 feet deep at least). I found an old ground rod at the back of our barn from previous fencing so I hooked up insulated wire to that and ran it through the barn to get to where we have our fence. So that wire hooks right into the electric fencer box. Then you have your live wire which runs from your electric fence box onto the wire on your fence. On our fence we have two strands of wire, these strands also have to be connected with a small strand of wire.

I came home today and our fence wasn't working, when I went to the actually electric fencer box I had a charge there so Steve and I had to start investigating. After some calling people and looking up common problems with electric fence I figured out that a piece of my fence wire was touching one of the T-posts which 'grounds out' the electric shock, same would happen if a tree or a lot of grass was touching the fence. As soon as I fixed that my fence was on and going, then out come the pigs!

It is such an amazing feeling to be able to let the pigs outside. They get to root around and roll around in the mud like pigs should be able to!

We've had a couple of the pigs get a pretty good shock, but I guess that's a good thing! Next step, making an area for mumma and the babies.