April 14, 2023
There is a section of electric fencing around our sheep pasture that keeps getting knocked offline by deer snapping the top wire. Just a few lazy inches of hoof drag breaks the wire and shorts out the entire fence, leaving our animals unprotected until morning. I could see the telltale hoof prints where the deer would land inside our pasture and where they would travel across to the other side. There, I could see where they jumped to get out - hitting the wire once again. Every night they would make two to four breaks, which I would dutifully fix the next day.
The forested area on the north side of our pasture provides plenty of cover for them to hide, and our little brook provides an abundance of fresh water from which to drink. The fields on the south side of our pasture were once my grandmother’s peach orchard and, at least for now, provide ample grazing. Unfortunately, the shortest path between the brook and the orchard is straight through our pasture, so I don’t blame them for jumping the fence. It is exactly the path I’d take if I were in their hooves.
During the past three Springs, one of the deer gave birth to her fawn in our pasture. The mom would leave the fawn there on its own and come back to nurse it several times a day. Our electric fence provided them both with ample protection from coyotes, but only if the doe didn’t short it out, coming and going.
The average run of the mill, not terribly athletic, deer can jump an 8-foot-tall fence with ease, so the fact that they kept tripping over our 4-foot-tall fence was seriously annoying. At first, I thought it was just one deer, and I suspected an injury or old age, but then I noticed the second set of tracks which meant two deer were passing through - each snapping the wire on the way in and on the way out.
It finally occurred to me that maybe they couldn’t see the top wire, so we hung flagging tape every 10 feet. We also relocated a section of fence, peeling it back enough to expose a trail we made last year that goes around our pasture. It’s been two weeks since we made these changes, and two weeks of no breaks in our fence. Life just got infinitely easier for me and a whole lot safer for our sheep - and the fawn.