I heard racoon tastes pretty good...I think you should consider this recipe:

Here is a link that might be useful: Racoon Recipe

A dish of cat food with rat poison takes care of them and thins out the stray cats all for about 10$ .

I believe that Antonin Scalia uses (and recommends) the same method as Oil Robb

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Well berryman, I will try to answer your question. I must be in a fit of pragmatism this morning. :-]

I have an electric fence around a small garden to keep deer out. The important thing is to have the wires at the right height. Close enough to the ground they can't get under, and another one above so they can't hop over. Make sure the lower one doesn't touch the grass or it will lose voltage.

What kind of batteries does this thing use? The old farm ones used a big alkaline carbon battery, kinda pricey now. Hopefully yours runs on D cells or some such, if so you should consider some NiMH rechargeables. They'll pay for themselves.

Keep us posted, I'm interested in how it works out for you. Still twiddling with mine.

My 'fence' is a few poles with three or four strands of old VHS tape wound around the garden. A few CDs, countasy of the old web service providers like Earthlink dangle from the posts. And a few $1 solar lights provide a bit of brightness for the deer to see reflections of the tape and CDs at night.

Not perfect, but cheap.

Well its turned on for the first time tonight, just arrived. I wired around 3/4 of the garden (its a rectangular wooded 2.5' fence frame with chicken wire), then on the back side I moved two compost bins that the racoons love to tear up, with in the fence and the wires go across at three heights, 6", 18", and 31". So they cant crawl over three sides or just go under. It looks like Fort Knox or fort garden....This should go under you might be a Compost wacko when... you run enough electric fence to cover your compost. I threw some bread in the bins tonight and will see in the morning.. I will let you know. If this works out I will have a happy summer.

Well so far raccoon free and they were visiting the bins every night. Time will tell.

I use an electric fence for deer, only one strand mid-height. I know they can jump over, or go under but they usually only try it once a summer. Winter, I take it down and they eat everything. I don't know if raccoons are smarter than deer? We have one strand that keeps cows in, they won't go near it. Hopefully, your raccoons will get a shock or two and learn quickly.

Success. After a season of gardening and composting not a critter, cat or dog in the garden/ compost area. Used 6 D cells total for the season. Initial cost for the Fencer (Havaheart battery) and scoring some free wire from a retired farmer and the plastic knobs about $50 Next year just need batteries. Might even double my composting area. So easy and cheap....I now even throw meat in from time to time.....plus nothing destroying my bins when they are hungry, plus it keeps my garden critter free. The charge by the way ( i tested it in bare feet) really gets your attention. There was a week or so that the batteries were dead and I think the critters were so afraid they didnt come anywhere near.

berryman, could you give me some detail about your hookup. I'm curious what you used for a ground(s). If a ground rod(s), how long were they, what material, how deep into the ground. And did the chicken wire figure into the electric fence design anyway (as a ground?) . Also, what kind of plastic insulators did you use?

I have a similar battery operated unit (Zareba B10L) but I've never hooked it up. As posts I'm using 1/2" metal conduit emt pipes and it's hard to find an insulator that will fit the pipe diameter..

I bought a plug-in type and put it inside, in the corner of the garage. Ran the special high voltage capacity wire from there to the garden. The wire is supposed to be bury-able, haven't done that yet. No batteries to buy.

A resourceful person could also hook up a DC wall adapter to replace the batteries in a battery powered one.

robertz6: would love to see a photo of that deer fence!

A local winery uses electrical also and they put peanut butter on the electric tape to train the deer. Attracts then repels them. Works great I'm told.

I have a regular farm solar unit and find useing a fake animal,bird or scarecrow conditions animals to associate the sight of the scarecrow with a shock. A funny story that demonstrates what I'm talking about. I housed some baby chicks in a chicken tractor with a hot wire around the outside. I turned the chicks out and was watching while they chased grasshoppers. The chicks scared 2 cats up a tree , across the garage roof and out of sight when they chased a hopper in thier direction.