Tangled

Electronet is a wonderful invention. It is portable, electrified fencing with built-in fenceposts. It is designed to be used as temporary fencing, very useful for rotational grazing.

The theory of the stuff is sound. The reality has a few quirks ready to catch the unwary.

First, even though you probably want to put your fencing in the pasture or, if you keep goats, the shrub, the bottom strand of wire will ground out if it comes into contact with too much green stuff. That means you need to force your mower over previously nonmowed ground to clear a path. A string trimmer is a poor substitute and bush-hogging just doesn't cut it (get it?).

Of course, you can't mow where the fence will go until you are sure exactly where the fence will go.

That brings us to the second quirk, the math doesn't add up.

Our sheep fencing is supposed to be 164' long with each panel 12.5' feet. Somehow ours has 12 panels which are 13' each and one that is around 11'. Think about that. Thirteen sections. We have found it impossible to set up a rectangle using 13 sections of fence. So our pastures end up being odd shapes and we guess where to mow, often having to mow again to make it come out right.

Thirdly, never, never, never, never attempt to put this stuff up with only one person. Two is the bare minimum, a dozen would be even better. This would be the time to have an Amish size family so each kid could grab a fencepost to move the pasture. Of course, the Amish wouldn't be using electric fence anyway.

Since we want to use our electronet for rotational grazing, we need to move it every few weeks. But the sheep were already inside the fencing. We thought "easy, peasy. Just move it a bit at a time and the sheep will move along too." 

This worked fine the first time. The second was a good chance to learn how to catch escaped sheep.

The fourth problem with electronet is it has a mind of its own. Like Skynet, some time while it's stored in your garage, it develops self-awareness, decides humans are the enemy and plots and plans for our downfall. The favorite strategy towards this end is entanglement.

Do not ever turn your back on electronet before you install it. Somehow while it's laying on the ground, it subtly weaves its strands into snarls and tangles. Unless you have someone with the patience to undo the Gordian knot (in our case, that would be Tom), you face a session worse than Rapunzel with a hairbrush. Over time, we've come up with a system for tying strands together when we take the fence down, this reduces the mess but somehow the poles still snag strands along the way.

Despite these difficulties, electronet enables small-holders to move livestock around for more systematic grazing. And so far, it hasn't sent any Terminators our way.