The ultimate way to stop deer and other animals damaging your fruit trees.

At St Andrews we have a whole gamut of animals that attacked the new orchard. Kangaroos, Wallabies, possums, rabbits, wombats and more recently deer. Initially I began by surrounding each tree with wire mesh, but something was still eating the leaves and breaking off branches. Wallabies seemed to be the culprit. After a huge hail storm there was a lot of discarded acrylic roof sheet and I managed to get enough to surround all the trees. This seemed to work for a while, and did keep the possums and rabbits out,  orange and lemon trees had the tips eaten, plums, almonds,  apricots, hazel nuts  and peaches were also favourite targets.

 My frustration turned to real anger when I made 32 grafts and all but 2 were broken off and eaten.  The damage was as high as 2m and I was convinced there was something else. There was; I disturbed a deer.  These creatures can stand on their hind legs and reach up over 2m. Without question it was the deer that was the real problem.

The final level of defence was to surround the entire orchard with a solar powered 2m high electric fence that gives a 8,500V pulse.  I have had a couple of accidental boots myself and it sure works.

The fence has 5 stands, alternating live, earth, live, earth, live. There are three high gates which are not live. This has worked extremely well and I have observed NO animals in the orchard since the installation, just birds and bees.