There's a rule....

In the military and many law enforcement organizations there is a rule that if you are going to carry / use non-lethal weapons like mace or stun guns or tasers, you need to have them used on you so that you know what the capabilities and limitations of the weapon system are.  Well we have electric fence up at the farm and as our facebook fans know, we had an issue with some electrified poultry netting (located inside a 4-strand poly-woven electric fence with a beefy energizer on it) failing and allowing a predator to kill one of our hens.

So there I was yesterday in the mud and freezing rain trying to figure out why our portable-solar fence energizer (a solar charged battery with a grounding wire and a 'hot' wire attached to the fence) couldn't fully energize the poultry netting.  The cows were there in the general vicinity on the off chance I had some treats on me and also seemed interested in what I was doing with the netting.  I had been out there for a few hours and had already checked each fence pole to ensure that the wire of the fence wasn't touching the metal spike on each pole and had tried daisy chaining another grounding rod to the system and had tried just about everything I could think of.  Plenty of juice was coming out of the energizer it just wasn't electrifying the fence and that is usually a case of poor grounding rods, or too much drain caused by wet grass and weeds.  I was holding the tester in one hand and the alligator clip in the other and was trying to get the fence close enough to attach the hot cable to.  So I switched the tester to the hand I was holding the hot alligator clip in (you see where this is going don't you) and turned to reach for the fence with my now free hand.  As I did so there was a ZAAAAP!!! that seemed to originate in my chest and a bright flash as the probe of the wet tester being held in my wet hand must have touched the metal part of the alligator clip.  The cows were like "HOLY SHIT! We're getting outta here.  This dudes crazy." I think the pop and flash scared them as much as it scared me.  It had felt like I got punched in the chest with a broom handle and had grabbed a hot iron with my right hand at the same time.  I was all like: "Friggin outstanding. I just stopped my heart with that shock." And actually wondered if there was some way I could do a self-chest compression to re-start my heart.  Well, needless to say the world didn't go dark and I didn't get eaten by rogue raccoons but I can tell you that rain, mud, cold whipping winds, are not the ideal conditions for working on any sort of electric fencing.  Jeeze, imagine if that had been the horse fence.  Dang sucka!  I got the poultry netting up to just about 2000v which is the minimum range for being effective and called it a day.  Will have to look at fixes cause we can't have that fence failing every time it rains.  I'll contact the manufacturer to ensure it wasn't operator error before I publicly trash their product.