Electric Dog Fences > Products > Conductors
Metal Wire: Aluminum and Galvanized Steel Electric Fence Wire
Metal electric fence wires, both aluminum and galvanized steel, work well on electric fences, being excellent conductors and holding up reasonably well against the weather. Their principal disadvantage is that when anyone goes to reel them up they become nasty little tangles that cannot be re-used. This is in sharp contrast to polywire (see below), which can be reeled up, stored, and reused many times.
The aluminum wires listed here are not just any old aluminum wires. Rather, they are especially made for electric fences and are less vulnerable than other aluminum wires to the wear and tear doled out on such fences. They are also easy to work with, but are not strong enough to take the tension needed to make them run absolutely straight.
The high-quality 14-gauge galvanized steel electric fence wire listed below (product 02-80) has Class III galvanization, a 200,000 psi breaking strength, and suitability for high-tensile use. It is also less expensive than comparable aluminum electric fence wire (product 02-06). The down side is that this galvanized wire is not quite as good a conductor as aluminum, is a bit more prone to corrosion, and is harder to work with, being stiffer and springier than its aluminum cousins.
Polywire
Durable and easy to handle, electric fence polywire may be used for both stand-alone electric dog fences and for electric fences supplementing and reinforcing barrier fences. Because it can be reeled up and used again, it is recommended for seasonal electric fences. All of the products listed below come with a limited 5-year manufacturer’s warranty against UV damage.
Fence Nets
Besides working well with dogs, portable electric fence nets are commonly used to contain livestock like pigs, sheep, and goats, and also to exclude predators like coyotes and foxes. The fence nets we offer are well suited to handling both dogs and livestock; the lower (34 inch) height is best at dealing with dogs that are not great jumpers, while the taller (42 inch) height can deal with more energetic dogs. Both kits offered below are 165 feet long.
The great advantage of our fence nets is their extreme lightness and portability. Requiring relatively few posts, they are easy to pick up, roll up, and move from place to place—whether “place to place” means around your yard or to a summer home hundreds of miles away. The fence netting is made of green and white polyester lines (see photo above) combined with thin stainless steel wires interwoven with the horizontal lines. The mesh openings are 4 inches high and 6 inches wide. Each kit includes black corner posts that are tipped with zinc for ease of insertion into the ground, and each kit comes with attachment strings useful for joining its ends together and also for joining one kit to another.
Please note that the basic kit (products 21-03A and 21-03B) includes only the netting and posts. Chargers and ground rods are not included. If you are getting an AC-powered charger you will also need undergate and hookup wire (product 02-28) to get from the plug-in outlet and your charger to the fence. For more information on these nets see Fence Net Kits.
Mesh for Grounding Systems
A regular electric fence with a ground rod will not work if the ground is parched or all of Rover’s paws are off the ground when he hits the electrified wire. That's because water in the ground cannot carry the charge over to your ground rod in these circumstances. (There is too little water in the ground in the first case and no contact with the ground in the second; for more information on this point see How an Electric Fence Works.)
A good way to avoid this problem is to attach a foot-wide strip of bare galvanized chicken wire (products 14-20 and 14-21) to your fence, positioned so that Rover will touch both the chicken wire and an active wire simultaneously. Connect all the lengths of chicken wire together (if you have more than one) and run an ordinary wire from the chicken wire to the ground terminal on your charger. If your target dog then touches an active wire and the chicken wire at the same time he will get a zap, because he is serving as a bridge between the active wire and the grounded chicken wire.
You can resolve these same drought and paws-off-the-ground problems with tough four-foot welded wire fencing (product 14-27). Use this with posts and an insulator like 07-104 if you have no existing fence, or nail it onto a dog-porous existing fence to make that fence fully dog repellant.