What a lifesaver YouTube has been for me. As a city person moving onto a farm nine years ago, I had no idea what I didn't know, and what I needed to know. I have had some great tutors and mentors along the way, but YouTube has been a godsend.

Its gosling season, and every year we have an electric fence issue at this critical time. Fence goes off, fox gets in, geese get killed, nests get abandoned....its happened most years.

At the risk of jinxing us, not so far this year. And we have been lucky. Three times now this season a wombat has dug into the paddock, under the buried, tightened heavy chicken wire fence. They obviously cruise around the paddock, at night, then dig their way out again. Two holes, big enough for a fox, under the fence and by-passing the hot electric lines.

I think, but can't prove, its the foxes' caution that is saving us. I think if I missed the hole and it was there for a couple of nights, a fox would get in. But I check, twice a day, so there is only a small window of opportunity for the fox. (I am over there twice every day to feed the geese, so its no big deal to drive around the perimeter of the paddock and scan the fence.) The foxes' natural aversion to change means they are too cautious to use it on the first night, and after that I have filled it.

Might be a dud theory....I forgot to close the chicken coop door once, (just once!) and that very night a fox dug into the chicken yard, and used the open door to find and kill 50 chickens.

So apart from checking the fence for holes, I also check the hotwire for a working charge. And for weeks it has been getting steadily less powerful. Last week it was down to .8kv. On a decent fence you would expect 5kv, so .8 is way down.

I walked the fence, inside and out, looking for some sort of earthing problem. A loose wire from the fence stretching out and touching the electric hotwire was the most likely cause. On a good day you can hear the short clicking before you see the problem. More than once I've focused on the sound and located the fault by ear, and even to the point of hearing it as I drove past with my window open. Nothing though, couldn't find it.

I have a flash Gallagher fence tester/fault finder. Its the expensive one, its supposed to tell you the voltage, but more importantly, it indicates the seriousness of the leak and the direction, by an Amperage indicator. I have read the manual, and have talked to lots of people, but I've never really understood it properly. In the end I've solved the previous issues by finding the fault and fixing it, and haven't really made good use of the fancy tester.

So, YouTube it was. But this time, as a search reference, I didn't look for videos on fixing electric fences, I looked for how-tos on my Gallagher unit. And there it was, that moment when it clicked into place, and I got it.

I also picked up a really relevant extra piece of information. Our electric fences have gone through 12volt batteries on a regular basis. The poor old batteries only last, usually, a year. The battery guy replaced two, but then baulked after that...not unreasonably. He thought it was my lack of a frost protective housing that might be causing the batteries to die. Last year I had a small project to rehouse the gear. I moved it all to be inside the goose house, out of the elements. No improvement, batteries still died.

But, in a video, was this gem.....if you don't earth your system properly, you don't necessarily get a full charge running through the hotwire. But, its possible you get electrical feedback going back from the earthing pole to your battery, slowly killing it. Hah! (And, in fact, the earthing post actually gave off a voltage reading when I measured it. Not something that should be happening....)

Again, my fault. The Gallagher rep is friendly and a good source of wisdom. He told me ages ago I should earth the system properly, but I had lazily stuck with the age-old star-picket-hammered-deep technique. That's what most people do that I have seen. But I lashed out and bought a proper, galvanized earthing rod, and voila! Straight away my charge voltage improved.

What I had seen before that was no Amperage leak information. But after I replaced the earth, I could see there was quite a leak ...that way. Off I went, measuring every ten metres until I narrowed down the location. It turns out there were two separate issues. The first one was sheep mesh on the paddock fence had been pushed out to contact the hotwire. I fixed that and the voltage jumped. Still Amperage leaks...that way....!

And right when I was within a metre of the problem, I heard it.

It was nothing like what I was expecting. The hotwire was strained against a wooden diagonal support post. The post is untreated gum, and is slowly rotting away. So, even though its heavy, and to the eye solid, is is wet and retains moisture. The hotwire stretched tight against the damp wood was arcing. I fixed that, and again, voila! Our goose fence is now running a massive 8KV. That's its peak performance since we started here.

If a fox encounters that, it will blow them off the fence!

Post -note: An astute reader might think...."Hang on! If a fox can dig into the chicken yard, why can't the fox dig into the goose paddock?" Good question!

The goose paddock is an enclosed space that includes a gold-dredging hole, and the spoil from digging that massive cavern. By digging and dumping masses of river stone, a tough barrier to digging was created. The same landscape where I struggle to dig a hole to plant a tree is difficult for a fox to dog. Wombats are made of tougher stuff, and they steam-shovel their way through. When I fill the holes I use massive, 20-30kg rocks, which seem to be enough to make the wombat move to a new location. And dig again! Bit by bit the entire perimeter is getting a heavy stone collar.

Whoever built the original goose-paddock fence completed a difficult engineering task....getting that chicken wire into the ground must have been back-breaking work.

The chicken yard is on beautiful, soft river silt, and anyone can dig through that. When I extended the yard I buried wire 30cm into the ground, and concreted it in (!) but the original yard is breachable without too much effort.