 Hello, folks. Kent Stanford here with Alabama Extension talking to you today about some of the concepts related to temporary electric fencing. I guess the first question we'll address today is why do we even think about using temporary electric fencing? Well, the biggest reason that we can discuss is that it allows us to do proper grazing management. I think it's important that we understand that it allows us to utilize all the grazing resources on our farms. It allows us to maybe think about some of those areas that are a bit more challenging to incorporate into our grazing rotation. Maybe you have a wood lot. Maybe there's an area with kudzu that you can utilize at certain times of the year, provides a few days worth of grazing for you. And so really it allows us to put those animals in a certain place for a certain amount of time to maximize the grazing potential there. It allows us to work with some of these challenging sites that might be terrain, that might be woods, really provides an opportunity for us to work through some of those situations where permanent fence would really not be feasible. Temporary electric fence works very well for us to create lanes. We can use these as travel lanes back to a pen, back to some permanent fence to an area where we can put those animals to do whatever practices maybe we need to with them. And as long as they are accustomed to moving on a regular basis, they don't know the difference between moving to the pen versus moving to the next area that we've allocated for grazing. So the lane concept works very well once they are broke to the fence and they respect the fence. And I think we have to understand also, anytime we're using electric fence, this is not a physical boundary. We're talking about a mental barrier here. Once they have that electrical shock for the first time, they respect that fence and they don't try it anymore. One of the huge advantages to using temporary electric fence is that it's easy. Installation is fast. It doesn't require a lot of special tools and it provides us in just really short order a chance to put up some fence that is very, very effective. And finally, it's highly economical with just a very few components that are required and we'll talk about some of those. So anytime we're talking about electric fence, there are three main parts. We talk about the energizer first. It gets the most attention. It can create, it can be the one that costs the most money. So the energizer, some people call them chargers. We're in the south, so typically we'll call them chargers. But the energizer is a main consideration for us with electric fences. We also want to think about the actual fence itself. I suppose for the discussion today, what we'll be discussing is not a whole lot of fence. That's the advantage with temporary electric. We're not talking about a lot of individual parts, but the fence itself is one of the main three components to electric fence. Then finally the ground and we'll talk a bit more about that. I also include the tools of the trade and we have a picture here of a fault finder that we have in a temporary grazing kit that we have put together in our state. These fault finders to me are a requirement if you are going to have electric fence around, it allows you to check that fence correctly. You can get a reading on the voltage that's on the fence. What kind of draw you have there as well as allow you to find any faults or grounds that might be on the fence. So let's talk a bit more about the energizer itself. First thing I want you to understand is that there are lots of options, lots of options on the market. In some of the photos today you'll see a specific brand. It's important for you to understand that we have a temporary grazing kit that we put together in Alabama last year. We had some funding through NRCS, a project that we worked on with them to get some of these kits scattered across the state to show producers how easy they are to operate. So the brand that you'll see in the pictures today happens to be the one that we utilized for this particular project. But there are lots of options. There are lots of different manufacturers out there that produce not only the energizers but other components of these electric fences. And so it's important that you read as much as you can. Most of these manufacturers have very user-friendly websites. You can go on there, make a comparison between the different manufacturers, find the one that works best for you. They come in lots of different options in terms of the power source. So you can have the 110-volt plug-in style. You can have those that run off of battery. In that case, this would be a battery like a deep cycle marine battery that you would swap out every so often once it runs down a bit. Then there's the solar slash battery operator where the solar panel serves to keep the battery charged up. And then finally we have those that are strictly solar. There's some common terms that we need to understand when it comes to energizers. The stored joules or the energy that will be placed on the fence versus the released joules is important. So when we talk about stored joules, that's the joules that the charger actually produces, and then it releases a certain percent of that. So that might range from 60% of the stored joules that are released up to maybe a high of 80 or 85% that is actually released onto the fence. So those are differences in the chargers or in the energizers between the different companies. And you just need to understand how much of the energy is being released by that particular brand and that particular model. Also, most of these energizers are going to be sold with some other terminology listed on the label or on the box. They will typically say up to or have an up to distance listed on that label. We'll have to understand that that up to means a clean fence line. The recommended distance for normal fence might also be listed or you might have to dig a bit deeper onto the website or into the material to understand what the recommended distance is for more of a normal fence line and that can be quite a bit of difference. So understand what we're talking about there. And usually this is shown in number of miles of fence or in the number of acres that it will fence in. Since we're talking about temporary today, we have to understand that temporary requires a much smaller energizer versus a permanent fence installation. We're talking about smaller distances. We're typically talking about fences that we might be moving every two to three days. And so the smaller energizers are very effective because of the smaller distances. So now let's talk a bit about the fence itself. And again, for the temporary applications, we would be looking at something like a poly wire, poly tape or poly rope. Those come in different sizes. If you look at the different products on the market, you can see that within each one of these broad categories, there can be quite a bit of difference in the materials that are there. Those are typically going to be a braided product of some type. And you have the fibers that are actually carrying the electricity in a woven with a composite or plastic or some sort of synthetic fiber. As you move from a poly wire to a tape, you increase visibility. Oftentimes the tape is used for equine applications where horses need to see maybe a bit more. And so the tape is going to be a little bit heavier, but it will be a bit more visible versus the poly wire. And then when you move to a poly rope, that's a bigger diameter, maybe the size of your finger. And so these products are going to be quite a bit heavier and they will require a closer line post spacing because of the weight of that actual product. They're much higher in visibility versus say a 12 and a half gauge high tensile wire, which is kind of a standard product that we see. These products are also very flexible. They're going to be much lighter compared to the wire. That flexibility allows us to run that at whatever angle, whatever turn we need to make without any problem. On these temporary applications, we normally will be talking about tread and style posts, something that's easy to put in, something that's easy to take out. And then the final component on the fence side of things would be a reel that we would use to actually roll up or to reel in our poly wire, the tape or the rope that we might be using. So here we have a couple of pictures of some of the common post just so happens. These are the two post styles that we included in our temporary kits, the ring style or pigtail style on the left and then more of a traditional square type post on the right. This is a close up view of the tread on the bottom. So you can see we're not talking about a huge tread. These are going to be fairly lightweight so they're going to be easy to carry around and relatively easy to push into the ground. If you've got rocky ground, these will be a bit of a challenge for you. So you have to move it around a bit maybe until you find that spot that's soft enough to get it to sink into the ground all the way. Here's a close up shot of those posts up at the top of the post. You can see the ring style or pigtail style here with the slot at the bottom that easily slides the poly wire into. And then you just simply twist the post and then put it into the ground. The post on the right, the close up there, you can see a little different style as you see where the poly wire goes into the top of the post. A big advantage there on the style on the right, the white post, you have an opportunity to put multiple strands up at different heights where the limitation to the ring top is that you only have one option for one strand. So a close up here on the reel, this happens to be a geared reel so it makes the roll up or the reeling in a bit faster and the standard handle that came with this product that we used in our kit. The ground probably is the one thing related to electric fence building that people don't pay enough attention to. I think we get real focused on the energizers and on the actual fence itself. And over the years as I've worked with producers, probably over 90% of the issues that I've helped people with were related to not having the system grounded correctly. So the rule of thumb is that we would have one ground ride for every four joules of power plus one ride. So in essence you would always have a minimum of two ground rides, six foot ground rides driven into the ground. We would put those 10 feet apart in moist soil. Many times producers will put these under the eve of a barn so that you get the runoff from rainfall and keeps that soil with a little more moisture to it. Temporary systems still need a good ground but they don't have to have that type of ground just because we're talking about a much smaller charger. The picture here is of a T style handle on a ground ride that is used for the temporary setups. It's a three foot ride so we don't have to have quite the same setup as we would for a more permanent application. East of the Mississippi River we typically tell producers that they can run an all hot setup that they don't have to take a ground wire along the fence line for the animals to touch the ground wire and the hot wire in order to get a shock. Our ground is normally going to have enough moisture in it that the animals can get a shock for having touched the hot wire. So we recommend an all hot setup meaning all strands would be hot. And in some of these temporary applications I've seen producers that maybe could not get one of these T style ground rides into the ground but they did have an opportunity to drive in an actual T post and it served the purpose for the short duration that the fence would be set up there. So look at other options if you're having trouble with the ground but it's terribly important to get the ground done correctly. And finally I want to thank you for your time today and to let you know that just because you saw some specific manufacturers listed in here that does not necessarily imply endorsement on our part. Again we have a project ongoing in our state with funding through NRCS that we're happy to have to showcase these type materials to producers to help them increase the number of grazing days and hopefully decrease the number of hay feeding days so that they can be more profitable in their ventures. For more information you can go to aces.edu and search for information on this topic and others and we thank you for your time.