I run a speedwright 2000 with 20 watt panel. Ran it on 460' of premiere 1 48" goat net and large deep cycle battery. DON'T buy a cheap charger. Pulling that ground rod every day won't be any fun if you drive it like I do about 6' deep. When I moved the goats I used the 3 point on the tractor and a small chain tied in a clove hitch to pull the ground rod. Used a high lift jack a few time when. tractor was down.


Good quality charger and get a good ground. If I were buy today it would be the speedwright 3000

Edit. if you have heard of Joal Salitan from poly face farms that's who recommend this brand of charger. He said if your going to spend money on anything spend it on your energizer. Look him up if you don't know him and buy some of his books. Folks this ante normal( industrial food production) everything I want to do is illegal ( government making business nearly impossible) salad bar beef( his rotational grazing system)

All great books well written and a lot of humor. He is typically the key not speaker at things like the mother earth news fare conference and large home steading events. Great guy his farm is in swoops Virginia.

The best post on this thread.

Alrighty appreciate all the helpful comments

how far from the house are you running these tractors?

a wired charger is 1/2 or less the price of a solar and wow looking at fence chargers did they jump in price from when I bought mine
if you have a place to plug it in , you can run a lot of wire for the cost of a solar charger

you could run out along an existing fence or put some posts in with a 10 foot section of pvc on them to keep the hot wire well over head then just clip on where you need , it limits your quali tractors a little but how much do you really move them ,

I know with chicken tractors it is mostly move out till run out of space then over a cage width and start coming back in

If running a plug in system you definitely need to build in lightning diverters and/or surge protection as the household current is now in play. A blown up solar charger is a loss, burnt down home a tragedy.

Less then 100' from most of the plugs around my place and I was thinking of that but just seems like a extra bit of workin think of be willing to pay not to worry about. like to be able to just pick up and move and everything is just there ... Idk though my quail tractor really runs the same 100' run so might now be too bad if I do a over head like your saying

O ment to ask . Is there a chance I could end up killing smaller critters with too heavy of a charge ? Like if one of my quail manages to get out some how and gets zapped could it kill them ?

Also what about those deals I've seen camper use in bear county? Remember seeing them once or twice but never really looked into them seem slowly they might be a option

Maybe one of the electricians can chime in but the way I understand it is that amperage kills not volts and these things are designed to stay well below the amperage that can do damage and it's not a measure of body size either. But that said there are photos circulating the net of wildlife tangled up with bad results.

Someone more knowledgeable please school us on this.

yes basically it has to do with the resistance of the skin

skin doesn't conduct electricity great , it does better when wet , and even better if you can get under the outer layer

while a 9 volt battery doesn't feel like anything on your skin , it doesn't feel great on your wet tongue and we could kill you with an 9 volt battery IF we could set needles under the skin in just the right place think about how a pacemaker works install wires in the heart then shock it with a tiny charge from a battery that lasts years.

yes you can get burned by an eclectic fence , it will leave marks , if you are stuck in it for a time same as a stun gun

birds sit on hot wires all the time , they have no ground and very good skin and feathers for insulation.

birds sit on very very high current and high voltage lines all the time with no issue

squirrels run down power lines all the time , the issue is when they run across the top of the transformer and the voltage is high enough to over come the resistance and the current as well
our power company bumped line voltage a couple years ago , did something so it is still 120 a leg coming into the house
twice this year squirrel have made a bridge on the top of the transformer with their bodies by my drive way and taken out the fuse
they actually get 2 fuses the one for my transformer and the one down the street about 2 hundred yards that feeds my part of town.
they come put new fuses in and then we are fine till the next squirrel.
they go bang like a muzzle loader when they go , the fuse has a compound in it that when it fails it blows the element down the tube creating greater disconnect.
it cooks the fur off the belly of the squirrel from the 2 points the touched the transformer
I lived in this house 20 years without an issue and the guy from power who keeps comming out to put new fuses in said , yup they are having engineering look at options since they upped the voltage last year this has been more of an issue.


we use electrified poultry netting to keep chickens in and we don't kill chickens with the charger.
most of the time the juice for the poultry netting is just using a jumper off the pasture fence for the hot line that comes off a 100 mile charger in the machine shed.
step in posts and a spool of poly wire twine makes for very easy temporary running of hot lines they are about waste high but you could shove a few of those step in posts into a taller post.

there are also brutal photos of wildlife tangled up in regular old barb wire with no power at all , they do themselves in fighting it and and stress themselves to death similar to how 2 deer antler locked die stuck together

chargers are high voltage and extremely low current
some of those old HotShot chargers were higher current as well , that is what burned the weeds so well.
modern chargers are low current.

We have also used this model around our bee hives. It seems to work well, our oldest one is over 15 years old and still works (have changed the battery a couple times). Haven't had any pest issues. It is a little small for the large predators, at least based on collective internet knowledge but there are bears in the areas we have our hives and have never had one mess with a hive. Maybe they have never tried or else the fencer was enough of a deterrence.

You want that first encounter to be memorable....

I run 12 volt Parmak 30 mile fencers. Also have one 12 volt Gallager. They both work. I like the old school Parmak as it has a volt meter on it to tell you when battery is going low, plus an on/off switch. If fence is not shorted out to ground by a weed or something, a fully charged group 24 deep cycle battery from Walmart will stay charged for over a month. Not solar. AC fencers for a big pasture and the long haul. Like the 300 acres across the road. Two strands, grounded out all over the place.......and still shocking.

For the chicken tractor.......or any other temp use like a garden......if you know your target animal (say coons), then helps to bait the hot wire. Tin can with scent boosted cat food or some such hung on the hot fence.......goal is to direct their attention to that to sniff or lick. Bypass random chance they may touch it.........fur may insulate. Wet nose more effective connection.

By now, most people have run out of dumb kids and other rubes to use as fence testers. Poor man's version is to touch fence with tip of a screw driver while shaft is touching ground.....fence post or such. If fence is HOT, ought to do a good imitation of a really hot spark plug firing in the air. Should see the spark........hear the snap. If you got that, you got it hot.

For a temp use like around a chicken tractor to repel boarders, a 1/2" rebar trap stake driven a foot or so in the ground is more than enough ground rod as long as not on bone dry dirt, sand or rocks. If you don't think so, try it.

a decent tester is not that expensive
https://parmakusa.com/product/6-light-electric-fence-tester/?gQT=1

much cheaper in the long run that telling your wife to touch it to see if it works

No experience with solar power but, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFKWZKDJ?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share
I use this one for 3 acres of 3 strands of poly wire as well as a breeding hog pen with 2 strands of aluminum wire. No complaints in the 2 years we've had it. Keeps the hogs, dog, and goats in the field and the predators away from the chicken coop. 1 strand will keep pigs in btw.

Here hail is hard on them. Most electric failure is due to a bad ground. You get them grounded good, look out.

That one should have some bite at 5.5 joules, I'm running an 8 joules charger and can testify it bites.

This, prayers sent!