In simple terms, stray voltage is the presence of voltage or current found anywhere that it doesn't belong. Think of it as a trespasser on a farm or like a weed in a garden. Grass growing in your lawn is not a weed, but when it grows in your vegetable garden it is a weed. It doesn't belong there.
YES! There is research going back at least 5 decades where scientists have studied the effects of stray voltage on dairy cows. Many factors go into how and what degree each individual cow is affected. This website will help you better understand what you need to know to tackle this silent killer.
The source of stray voltage can come from either side of the electrical service. If the source comes from the power company's side of the transformer, it is referred to as the Primary Side. If the source is from the farm side it is called the Secondary Side. Secondary side problems can be from leaking electrical lines (like bare-concentric wires or line splices) or problem motors or items that are incorrectly bonded to the ground. Primary side problems can be caused by undersized or corroded neutrals serving the farm, disconnected grounds or other line faults. These problems can affect the secondary side by either direct connection through the wires or it can indirectly affect the farm through the utility grounding system. The latter are called "neutral to earth currents".
No! Stray voltage can be likened to cancer. A person can live a healthy lifestyle, eating the right foods, exercising and getting great sleep. But, if they have cancer, they are still going to be affected by it and may even die from it if it goes undetected and untreated.The same is true for farms with stray voltage. Some incredibly well managed herds have been negatively affected by stray voltage. No amount of wise management choices and animal comfort and husbandry will keep stray voltage from affecting the cows. It will always affect at least a portion of the herd. And like cancer, the longer it goes undiagnosed, the more difficult it is to recover from.
Usually, this first hint that you have stray voltage comes from the cows themselves. Observing your herd closely will alert you to behavioral problems that do not have an easy fix. Check out the symptoms page to find an extensive, but not exhaustive list of symptoms.
If you think you have stray voltage you will need a team approach to tackling it. It can take time to find and remedy stray voltage issues. In addition to finding a good electrical expert to help with that, you will need to enlist the help of your veterinarians, nutritionists and other consultants to help mitigate the detrimental effects stray voltage will have on your herd. Check out the Expert Resources page to help you and your team understand each of your roles in this.
This question is like asking "What amount of second-hand smoke in a room ok" or "What amount of cancer is ok in your body"? The short answer is NONE.
Actual barn notes from research show current at 0.25 mAmps will cause the cow to physically react. But studies have not been done to measure lower than that level of current, or to measure long term exposure. These studies only last a few weeks to a couple months. Even at those short exposure times, cows have been found to have negative reactions, especially to their immune system.
Farms which have had extended periods with even very low levels of current experience severe losses to their herds. It is not acceptable to have even 1% of a herd affected negatively. That would be equivalent to someone saying its ok to have 1% of people get cancer.
There will always be varying electrical potential throughout the barn since it is impossible to perfectly space and connect every re-rod in the cement and piece of metal in the barn. This causes a differential in the exposure of a cow when their four feet and other body parts are touching non-identical surfaces. This phenomenon will be even more prevalent where cement pours were done separately like one you would see at the entrance of the milking parlor. Herds with problems on their equipotential plane will observe cows hesitating and/or jumping across that change in the electrical potential in the floor. Also, when current is flowing through an equipotential plane, capacitve effects between the floor and other objects cows come in contact with can be very important and result in shocks to the cows.
This question has many answers and often times depends on the source of the problem and the electric company and experts you work with. Sometimes the presence of stray voltage is obvious, but rarely so. It is a sly and deceptive problem and has numerous presentations on a farm. Check out the section on symptoms to see the many ways it can be expressed in a herd. Once you suspect stray voltage may exist, check out the section called expert resources on how to proceed.
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