fence charger

[pdfangus]

My 24 year old gallagher died over the weekend.

Spent half of yesterday trying to find a repair place and find a replacement charger.

local guys have wait times in excess of three months. Found a place in tennessee that say they will give me an estimate and turn it around in a week. going to send as soon as I can find a box.

as a temporay replacement I bought

http://www.patriotchargers.com/p20.htm

can go either 120 volt or 12 volt. interested to get it and try it. supposed to have shipped yesterday.

Jim Tate
Pipe Dream Farm
Beaverdam, Va.

 

[Idaman]

pdf - You may have been lucky to have the old Gallagher go out. There was a girl killed in Oregon a few years ago and the charger was an old Gallagher. The problem for the charger owner was that the old charger was not UL approved and hence they were liable.

The charger was energizing a fence along an irrigation canal and the girl was supposedly knocked in and drowned.

With all these new foreign made chargers absolutely be sure that they are approved.

 

[greene_hjm]

which model charger was it?

All of the Gallagher's have been UL listed for over the last 10yrs.

I would be more worried about the "made in China" Patriot converter box that converts the 110VAC to 12VDC.

There is less than 1 person per year killed by electric fence and it is usually due to electrified barbed wire that will not allow a person to become untangled. They do not "fry", but rather suffocate from not being able to catch their breath. Electrified barbed wire should be illegal!

 

[pdfangus]

My Gallagher is an old BEV III and it has a UL lable on it.

I got it back yesterday but have not hooked it up yet.
Sent it to Brookside charger repair and they turned it around in two days and the cost is very reasonable.

I highly recommend them.

The little Patriot is okay.

while I have one heifer calf that will chew on the fence with it on, my wife accidentaly touched it yesterday and says it was working very nicely thank you. Not numbing like the Gallagher, but it is not supposed to be. I am going to use the Patriot on a smaller section of fence powered by a battery when I hook the Gallagher back up.

Government regulation and union wages are driving all manufacturing off shore.
foreign manufacturers don't have to deal with EPA, ERISA, Labor, IRS, USDA, FDA and all the rest of the alpahbet regulations from the USA.

 

[tytower]

There is less than 1 person per year killed by electric fence and it is usually due to electrified barbed wire that will not allow a person to become untangled. They do not "fry", but rather suffocate from not being able to catch their breath. Electrified barbed wire should be illegal!

I find this hard to fathom . Got any reference sites or anything I can refer to?
You hold on to a gallagher fence putting out a high voltage but little current and it sure aint gonna kill you.
It'll annoy you, sure, but stop you breathing ? I doubt it,

 

[greene_hjm]

It's not Gallagher specific. It can happen with ANY energizer WHEN hooked to barbed wire. If you grab smooth hitensile, sure it will annoy you then you let go of it. However, if you become entangled in electrified barbed wire and began to thrash around and get even more tangled up, there is eventually a point where you cannot get away from it... and it keeps shocking you every second. After a period of time you will not be able to catch your breath and get enough O2 in your system-then lights out. The energizer does not kill you.

 

[pdfangus]

hooked up my repaired gallagher BEV III over the weekend.....
repaired by Brookside Charger Repair who only had it for three days.....and one of those days was waiting for me to call them back about the repairs needed....

It is popping like new.....

My heifer Vivian is no longer chewing on the fence....or running thru the tape with abandon.

My son has lost a couple of calves to coyotes this fall already and he sees them every night. shoots when he can but neighbors keep calling the sherrif on him which is just a hassle for him and the sherrif.
he has a lot of upscale suburban infringment. people who want to live in the country but want to act like they are in manhattan.

he brings the cows up every night to a small lot during calving season and turns them out in the morning. some of the cows have gotten really protective and he has had cows put him in the truck this fall while trying to tag and weigh calves. I think it is because they are fighting the coyotes.

He seems to have a lot more over there than we do. We have them but, there is a lot of fox hunting in my area and I think that helps keep them under control as the fox hounds run the coyotes too. this is not equestrian type fox hunting. this is competitive judged hound running, pickup driving and whiskey tasting after foxes. and the local boys manage to have something for the hounds to chase year round.

anyhow I think my hot fence does help in keeping the yotes out of my cows. My cows will kill a dog if they get the chance but they have never gotten mean toward me at calving..... but then my cows now are up close and all pets.

 

[daggerduke]

I acquired 4 old Gallagher chargers. a BEV2, a BEV3, MPE2, and M1500. I currently had an older (2001) Gallagher M800 and absolutely love the thing. None were working quite right, but at least were coming on and clicking. I did some research and found that the Gallagher BEV3 is the same exact fence charger as the M800, just an older name but same parts.

I called Gallagher looking for some help with parts about 3 months ago. They had most parts for the BEV3, MPE2, M1500, but not all parts, and none for the 1981 model OLD BEV2. After talking with them, they said that most likely there was either bad capacitors or output transformers inside of them. The transformers I guess were discontinued for the BEV3, MPE2, M1500, and the M800 about 3 or 4 years ago. SO I was a little bummed about that :bang:

Did some internet research trying to find some help with this and most people said to just toss them or keep them for spare parts. I found a place online, www.fencerfixer.com, and saw that they did some repairs. I did find others that repaired fence chargers as well, but no one had the parts needed and had never heard of the BEV2 or MPE2. I called up the fencer fixer people and the guy I talked to was very familiar with them and told me not to worry and send them in for a free estimate, what did I have to loose besides a little freight.

They called me about a week after I had sent them and low and behold they were able to fix every single one of them, and not that expensive of a price either. I was happy as a little school girl :banana:
They shipped them back after payment, and I've slowly hooked them up on different areas and every single one of them was popping and snapping like they should and put out a nice 6Kv to 7Kv on the fence. Before they were down around 4Kv to 2Kv. The transformers were part of the issue, but they were able to work some magic and make them run again.

SO I would highly recommend them if you ever have any old fence charger that's past their glory days. Especially an old Gallagher BEV3, M800, BEV2, MPE2, or M1500. These guys fixed it and on the cheap......bravo I say :clap:

 

[Supa Dexta]

There is less than 1 person per year killed by electric fence and it is usually due to electrified barbed wire that will not allow a person to become untangled. They do not "fry", but rather suffocate from not being able to catch their breath. Electrified barbed wire should be illegal!

I find this hard to fathom . Got any reference sites or anything I can refer to?
You hold on to a gallagher fence putting out a high voltage but little current and it sure aint gonna kill you.
It'll annoy you, sure, but stop you breathing ? I doubt it,

I've had a calf die from being tangled in high tensile that was slack, and was shocked to death over time. And you ain't no holding onto my gallagher.

 

[Dave]

I would like to see the man who can hold on to a M1500 Gallagher. I hit one of those one time. It was a religious experience.

But I do remember that girl being killed in Oregon. That was back in the mid 90's. She drowned in the irrigation cannel. They just figured that the fence had something to do with it.

 

[greybeard]

Old thread..
But, I have a Patriot solar charger I use as a temp fence charger & where I can't get 110v line power to. I've had no problems with it.
Patriot, SpeedRite, Sta-Fix, and Pel are all made by the same NZ company: Tru-Test Group. At one time Gallagher owned about 20% stake in Tru-Test and wanted all of it but an Aussie regulatory group refused their request to buy tru-test out.

 

[daggerduke]

I got my hands on a 100 mile charger from my neighbor. He bought it at TSC for a pretty good chunk of change around 7 years ago. I've always hear that some of TSC fencers were not really good. This looks like a Zareba, Red Snap'r, or the Blitzer 100 mile charger the local farm and feed store carry here. It's labeled with Tractor Supply Co. All over the front of it. What are some views on the Zareba brand fencers, good or bad? By the way, anybody have any old or broken fencers or fence chargers they want to give away, I'm always needing a back up here and there. If it's broken, I'll send it to the Fencer Fixer Repair people lol

It didn't work at all, so I sent it to that Fencer
Fixer Repair place again that I sent the old Gallagher fencers to. It was a freebie, so I had nothing to lose but a little shipping. After about a week since I sent it, they called me up. It was pretty cheap compared to a knew one, I think I paid $108 and that included the return shipping. I haven't got it back yet, but I need it.
I have an old Parmak Mark 7 that's quit after 10 or so years running without any issues.

I quick thing about this fencer repair place that I didn't know when I had the old Gallagher fencers worked on, they put 1 year repair warranties on their repairs through them. So I'm getting pretty good deals on repairs of these fencers. If you every need some old fencer worked on, I think highly of these people, they nice to talk to as well. www.fencerfixer.com is their site.

 

[Supa Dexta]

So you sell used fencers? Or you work for them.. 2 single posts on here, both talking about one company?

 

[greybeard]

So you sell used fencers? Or you work for them.. 2 single posts on here, both talking about one company?

I think he may be somehow related to this guy:
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=97619&p=1234749#p1234749

 

[Nesikep]

I have a Parmak 12V fencer that just quite, my Zareba I managed to patch together but it's on the way out.. the Gallagher was a POS and quit without much time on it.

The Zareba we have is a a very powerful fencer at 6.75 joules.. I've accidentally touched the mainline with a piece of irrigation pipe while in wet gum boots.. I'll say I didn't hold on to that pipe!.. It's one thing if you know you're working around a hot wire and get zapped, but if you're not expecting it, it really rattles your bones.

 

[daggerduke]

So you sell used fencers? Or you work for them.. 2 single posts on here, both talking about one company?

I don't work for anybody but myself. I've worked in a few different trades over the years. I don't sell the fencers, I put them to use. I do buy new ones from time to time, but we go to farm auctions and find these old ones on the cheap every once in awhile, and we're always needing a back up.

I see on this forum people sometimes have questions about fencers needing repaired or having trouble. I figured since I got helped out by this place, maybe somebody else could use their help.

I help a few older local farmers here and there with electric fence and their rotational grazing set ups or if they need help with maintenance on their fence, when they need an extra set of hands.

I'm really good at troubleshooting fence and fence set up, so that's where I want to help out on here. Most of the post I see about that sort of topic, are older, so I don't bother putting my input on those. I really enjoy this forum, I like reading what people have ran into and what their experiences are. :tiphat:

 

[daggerduke]

I know what you mean there lol! Let me tell you a story.

I helped my brother about 6 years ago set up a small fence around his back yard to keep the dog from jumping out, a boxer/pitbull mix. He had chain link already, but the dumb dog was still getting out. I told him we need to put a hot wire around this and train him to fence.

We ran a single strand of that rope type electric fence wire around the top rail of the chain link, through about 40 or so insulators. We used one of my good spare units that I had acquired (Gallagher M800). WAY bigger than what he needed, but the dog needed to learn the hard way lol. We installed 2 ground rods we figured it would be enough since it was a really small area of around 600sqft give or take.

After getting this all set up, it was time for the test. We didn't have a tester handy, so I told my brother to just put the back of his hand up to it. After some coaching, he finally did it, but he said he barely felt anything....hmmmm.

So went and grabbed a tester, tested the fence and got a reading of around 6kv, so we knew for sure the fencer/and fence should be good.

After about 20 minutes of bs and some frosty drinks between a small group of us, I leaned over and was resting my arm on the metal corner post of the chain link. And without realizing it, I moved just enough and bumped into that hot wire............SNAP! I wasn't thinking and didn't expect it lol

After all that, my brother asked me why I got shocked so hard and he barely felt it. Hmmm, thought about it and talked about it, and my cousin said, look at his boots. Looked down and my brother was wearing his army boots. They have a thick rubber soles on them. He wasn't getting grounded well enough and wasn't able feel the shock like I did.

I asked him, take your Damn boots off and touch that fence..........He said that sure as hell ain't gonna happen lol.

So I feel your pain brother lol

 

[hurleyjd]

My Gallagher is an old BEV III and it has a UL lable on it.

I got it back yesterday but have not hooked it up yet.
Sent it to Brookside charger repair and they turned it around in two days and the cost is very reasonable.

I highly recommend them.

The little Patriot is okay.

while I have one heifer calf that will chew on the fence with it on, my wife accidentaly touched it yesterday and says it was working very nicely thank you. Not numbing like the Gallagher, but it is not supposed to be. I am going to use the Patriot on a smaller section of fence powered by a battery when I hook the Gallagher back up.

Government regulation and union wages are driving all manufacturing off shore.
foreign manufacturers don't have to deal with EPA, ERISA, Labor, IRS, USDA, FDA and all the rest of the alpahbet regulations from the USA.

I have the same Gallagher III that you have. I am thinking of buying a solar panel, 12 volt battery, and an inverter and trying to make this a stand alone charger. I would house it in a small shelter and make it movable if needed. Any problems doing this, looks as if it only draws 8 watts.

 

[BRYANT]

My son has lost a couple of calves to coyotes this fall already and he sees them every night

start feeding the coyotes old meat works real well just don't let it freeze the best way to keep it from freezing is to soak it in the old green anti-freeze feed it in a tub so you can keep some of the anti- freeze in with it don't let the meat freeze

 

[Nesikep]

Hurley, I've tried that.. the inverters are power hogs and will kill the battery.. they also have a bad sine wave, and when I used my Zareba on it it blew the fuses for some reason.