Hot Wire

To keep roaming dogs off his lawn, Arthur W. Burns, a Narberth, Pa. electrical engineer, strung a single wire around his property, a foot above the ground, attached the wire to his no-volt electric light system. When a trespassing dog grazed the wire last week, it got an electric shock, ran away yelping. Soon the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals heard about Mr. Burns's electric fence, asked for an injunction to compel him to remove it. Few days later the Philadelphia Electric Co. tested the fence, pronounced its amperage too low to harm dogs or children, and the S. P. C. A. called off the suit.

Though such devices may be dangerous to animals in wet weather, they are a big boon to the U. S. farmer. Ordinary fences are expensive, require several strands of wire, wear out quickly. If equipped with barbs, as most of them are, they occasionally injure animals severely. Electric fences can be put up at about a third the cost of the old-type fence and the operating expense is negligible--usually not more than 18-c- a month. The better fences give short intermittent shocks, so that animals will not "freeze" to the wire, as they might if the current were strong & steady. Once shocked, most animals will stay away from the wire.

Currently there are some 250.000 miles of electric fence in use on more than 100.000 U. S. farms. Most of them consist of a single wire, though many farmers use two, or even three, for small animals. Two or three feet above the ground, the wires are connected with the no-volt electric supply line or to a 6-volt battery through a controller which governs the voltage and current so that the fence will shock livestock without injury. A survey Idaho took two years ago showed that the State's farmers are turning more & more to electric fences, are finding new uses for them. Among them: 1) to stop hogs from rooting under woven-wire fences; 2) to prevent animals from raiding chicken houses at night; 3) to keep cows in adjoining pastures from nosing each other, thus preventing the spread of Bang's disease.

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