Electric Fence Works Best for Fenceline Weaning
Why calves respect an electric fence more than another type of barrier.
July 23, 2025
Rob Davidson, a rancher in northeastern Alberta, Canada, 85 miles east of Edmonton, has raised and pastured cattle for many years, utilizing rotational grazing with electric fence. He says the definition of a good fence is something that will hold cattle, and an electric fence will do that job very well.
Davidson describes trying to rope a heifer needing treatment. After chasing her the length of the paddock she came to a screeching halt at the polywire across one end.
“We tried to rope her and missed, so she took off again, toward the far end, and we turned around and headed back,” he says. The four-strand barbed-wire fence at the other end didn’t even break her stride.
“She crashed right through that fence!” Davidson recounts, lamenting most barbed-wire fences won’t stop a determined animal.
There’s a difference between the “power” of an electric wire and a physical barrier (barbed wire), Davidson says. The electric fence has more power over the animals’ minds. After being shocked, they don’t want to subject themselves to that experience again. They respect the fence and want to stay away from it.
A shock is a greater surprise and physical deterrent; whereas, cattle are quite at ease and comfortable with a barbed-wire fence or other physical barrier.
“They rub on it and try to reach through to eat grass on the other side,” Davidson says. They don’t consider barbed wire, netting or pole fences a threat.
Portable electric fence can be used for sorting or loading cattle. Once cattle are trained to an electric wire, they don’t question it. When moving cattle along a road or through a barnyard, you can even use a baling twine “fake fence” to block a driveway or some other area you don’t want the cattle to enter, and they won’t try to go through it.
Fenceline weaning
An electric fence works better than traditional fence when fenceline weaning, Davidson says. Calves that grow up around electric fences have great respect for them and avoid touching them.
“When doing fenceline weaning, however, I’ve never heard anyone explain why it works so well to use electric fence,” Davidson says. “People never say that it’s about the nursing — and not nursing. They talk about calf comfort and that the cattle are more comfortable if they can lie next to one another — the cow and her calf — just through the fence. But the cattle we weaned with electric fence do not lie right next to the fence.”
They sleep a little bit away from it, because they are afraid of it biting them.
“It’s the nursing they were thinking about when they approached the fence to get to the cow, and if they get shocked while wanting to nurse, they associate that nasty experience with nursing and don’t want to try to approach mom that closely again,” he says. “It’s a mental association that dissuades them from wanting to nurse.”
It’s similar to what would happen if you went to your favorite coffee shop and they put something in your coffee that tasted terrible, he says. You wouldn’t want to try that again. Yet, no one has ever really discussed that it’s not about the comfort of being with mama. At that point in the calf’s life, mama is a source of food. Mama teaches the calf to graze and what to eat and where to go for water. They travel together, and the calf mimics mom. But the desire to nurse can be altered with an electric shock.
The deterrent, however, must be applied when the calf is thinking about nursing — coming to the fence to get to mom to nurse — so the two things are associated and connected in the calf’s mind and memory. This is how animals learn to avoid something that gives them a bad experience.
Editor’s note: Heather Smith Thomas is a freelance writer and cattlewoman from Salmon, Idaho. [Lead photo by Jacqueline Nix (iStock / Getty Images Plus) via Getty Images.]
Angus Beef Bulletin EXTRA, Vol. 17, No. 7-B
Topics: Animal Handling , Equipment / Facilities , Management
Publication: Angus Beef Bulletin
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