Increasing Your Electricity on Pasture

Since we started raising sheep, our go-to method for grazing and keeping them contained has been using mobile electric nets. Right now, we only have one fully fenced pasture – our 5-acre lambing area. The rest of the farm is open, so we've become pretty skilled at managing our commercial flock with these portable nets.

One of the first hurdles we faced was getting enough charge in the nets to stop those sheep from sneaking underneath. I tried a bunch of things, mostly adding more grounding rods, but it never quite did the trick. That’s when I started digging into the science of electric fences. One thing that jumped out at me was how almost every permanent electric fence setup connects grounding rods with wire, usually spaced around 10 feet apart. The amount of acreage you're covering dictates how many rods you need.

Armed with this info, I started thinking about how we could apply this to our mobile nets. My first step was buying 9-foot grounding rods and cutting them into 3-foot sections. Then, I started connecting these sections with wire. I immediately noticed a better charge – the voltage started to climb! This got me thinking about how I could incorporate wiring while still keeping the system mobile.

That's when the idea of using automobile jumper cables as my connecting wires hit me. Here's how I set it up: when creating a new paddock, I'd hammer in a 3-foot grounding rod at the corner where my charger would be. Then, I'd take a single jumper cable and connect it to that rod. I'd grab another jumper cable and start linking them together. After about three or four in a line, I'd go back and pound in another 3-foot section of grounding rod right where the two jumpstart connectors met. I’d finish the line with the last jumper cable and another rod.

Then came the moment of truth – turning on the electricity and checking the voltage. Depending on the charger and the number of grounding rods and jumper cables, I could get readings anywhere from 2,000 to 10,000 volts. For a smaller paddock, maybe I'd only use three grounding rods. But for something larger, say around 10,000 square feet, I'd probably use five or six. The general idea is, once your mobile net is set up for a bigger paddock or pasture, go ahead and start placing your grounding rods and connecting them with the jumper cables, checking the voltage as you go until you reach the charge you're aiming for. Personally, I like to see a solid 2,000 volts, especially in a larger pasture.

Now, there's definitely a bit of equipment involved, and moving it all from paddock to paddock can be a consideration. My basic kit includes a 3-pound sledgehammer, my 3-foot grounding rods, and five or six single jumper cables. When setting these up, I generally try to avoid placing them where I might need to walk back across – there's nothing worse than installing a grounding rod only to have to pull it right back out!

Which brings me to the fun part: getting those rods out of the ground. During the wetter parts of the year, you can usually just give the rod a few good whacks from all sides with the sledgehammer, and it should come loose. However, if it's the middle of a dry summer or they've been in the ground for months, it can be a real bear. I tried using an old tire jack with some webbing wrapped around the rod, which was okay but not always the fastest. Eventually, I just started using the front-end loader on my tractor to pull them out. It saves a ton of time.

When it comes to the jumper cables, I actually started out by buying some really cheap aluminum ones. These worked well enough for the first few years. As they degraded or fell apart (mostly because they were aluminum), I'd replace them with more expensive copper cables. Generally, the pricier copper cables will let you extend the distance between grounding rods, going from around 6-7 feet to almost 10 feet, depending on the specific cable. However, I wouldn't recommend jumping straight into buying the most expensive ones right away. It's probably best to start with three or four inexpensive sets that you can separate, giving you six or eight lengths of cable to use between your grounding rods.

One of the things that we're doing now since we're back to basically starting a flock (you can see it in the pictures!) is using a different grounding method in some situations. I've run a 2,000-foot reel of low-tensile wire across my pasture and connected it to my charger. Now, as I move my approximately 1,000 square foot paddocks (using 400-foot Premier nets arranged in a square) across this 7-acre pasture, I don't have to pull up any grounding rods. I simply set up the net and connect it directly to the low-tensile wire. It's working really well so far!

Another fantastic addition to my mobile net system has been incorporating solar panels. In the past, I relied on a couple of extra deep-cycle marine batteries, charging them in the barn and swapping them out when the charge in the pasture got low. This worked fine for years, but I finally invested in some solar panels from Harbor Freight Tools, and they've made a huge difference in keeping a consistent, full charge on the battery. This, in turn, means the charger is always putting out a good zap. The next step, like many others who use this kind of setup, is to get some sort of wagon to hold the charging equipment and build an adjustable bracket for the solar panel to maximize sunlight capture.

Overall, this system has served us really well. As we rebuild our flock, I'll definitely continue to use some of the techniques we've relied on in the past, but I'm also excited to keep making modifications to create a truly versatile, flexible, and adaptable mobile net system. If you have any questions about our methods, don't hesitate to ask in the comments – we'd be happy to share what we've learned!

The basic start point, a bunch of grounding rods,
and jumper cables., and jumper cables.

With the grinding rods pounding
into the ground, all of the jumper cables
are connected to them at the top.
We leave about 6 to 8 inches of the rod exposed.

The first rod goes in the ground,
where we will have the battery
and the charger and solar panel
with the components.