I have an electric fence/wire around the top of my split-rail fence surrounding about 1 acre of land.
I keep finding dead birds right next to/under the fence wire. Not just one or two, but actually have found 6 birds so far this summer (small sparrows of something similar).
There is a wire going from a copper ground rod to the unit. Then from the unit around the 1 acre fence. For the last ~100ft or so, the wire splits down and goes along the bottom (the area where the dogs kept digging out).
I'm not SURE it's only in the area where the bottom split exists, but so far, that's the only area I've found birds.
There are weeds/grass growing that touch the fence at the bottom, which is my guess as to why this is happening (grounding the whole thing, even if only slightly?), but I don't know for sure or really understand why. Are my two options really to either keep the fence from touching ANY weeds/grass or have it kill birds?
I actually have this same scenario in two locations, one with this Fi-Shock 5-acre fence charger, and one with this Fi-Shock 10-acre fence charger. Both with dead birds.
Other than the dead birds, is this an issue for my dogs? Neighborhood kids? …etc?
Best Answer
Even with a small charger like you have if a bird is eating at the fence line and touches the fence ! Wham ! It is dead. We spray our fence line to keep the horses and grass / berry vines from shorting the fence out. Our charger is a 50 mile running at 15KV with no shorts from grass/ berries before we started weed eating and spraying we did have a few dead birds but since then I haven't found one.
I did not notice you asked about dogs and kids. Kids will usually only touch the fence 1 time and the jolt keeps them from doing it again unless they are like I was and when wearing rubber boots I would touch the fence and a buddy yes we both got shocked but I would be expecting it maybe that had something to do with me becoming an electrician...lol. Dogs some times take a couple of shocks to figure out where the thing that bit them was and to stay away from the fence. I have never heard of a large animal or person being injured beyond the initial jolt.