Horses are important too

[SMB]

Poll.....

Did Telectrix wire up Newbury race course?

 

[rocker]

Rocker

Sorry mate the horses were still in the paddock being walked around on the rubber mat and when they left the rubber mat for the track it happened just before the jockeys were about to mount. The metal bits that goes between their mouth were hot and burnt the horses mouths as well.

Makes sense then. Poor little sods.

 

[SMB]

Rocker......we will speak about the salt soon mate. I tried to start a new thread earlier but couldn't spell the word I needed to spell so I gave up. Basically, I caught a Mullet just under 10 pounds last summer in my local eastery, err, eustory, err estory. Laugh. Free lining bread on a size 10.

tonys. im on your side buddy.

right, 100 lugworm waiting to get drowned. See ya guys. This is a great site.

 

[pushrod]

Yeah, I just find it odd that no other horse was affected, nor any people. You do know how doped up those horses are sometimes. I reckon there's a much greater chance that they were both given an accidental OD at roughly the same time. Thats my theory anyway.

Large 4 legged animals are at much greater risk than humans from live cables touching the ground.
When an underground cable is cut the potential field reduces very quickly around it.

If you think of a human standing, even barefoot, on the ground their feet are so close together that they will be at almost the same potential. Therefore only a very small current would flow and it would be up one leg and straight down the other, not close to the heart.


If you think of a horse walking often it will have one front and one rear leg off the ground at the same time. The two legs on the ground are sufficiently far apart to be at considerably different potentials therefore a much larger current will flow and the route of the current can take it across the heart - killing it.

When a power line comes down in a field it can kill all the big animals and yet humans/small animals walking near it can be completely unaffected. [And of course we are not normally walking around barefoot anyway]

edit : started to reply about half an hour ago then had to make the wife tea and then the phone rang - just seen that i am repeating a bit of what Tony said

 

[tonys]

Rocker......we will speak about the salt soon mate. I tried to start a new thread earlier but couldn't spell the word I needed to spell so I gave up. Basically, I caught a Mullet just under 10 pounds last summer in my local eastery, err, eustory, err estory. Laugh. Free lining bread on a size 10.

tonys. im on your side buddy.

right, 100 lugworm waiting to get drowned. See ya guys. This is a great site.

SMB Good Stuff, I'm on the side of all Electricians and Course River Anglers, do enjoy my Barbel fishing

 

[tonys]

Large 4 legged animals are at much greater risk than humans from live cables touching the ground.
When an underground cable is cut the potential field reduces very quickly around it.

If you think of a human standing, even barefoot, on the ground their feet are so close together that they will be at almost the same potential. Therefore only a very small current would flow and it would be up one leg and straight down the other, not close to the heart.


If you think of a horse walking often it will have one front and one rear leg off the ground at the same time. The two legs on the ground are sufficiently far apart to be at considerably different potentials therefore a much larger current will flow and the route of the current can take it across the heart - killing it.

When a power line comes down in a field it can kill all the big animals and yet humans/small animals walking near it can be completely unaffected. [And of course we are not normally walking around barefoot anyway]

edit : started to reply about half an hour ago then had to make the wife tea and then the phone rang - just seen that i am repeating a bit of what Tony said

I knew someone would explain it a little bit better than me.

Cheers

 

[telectrix]

Poll.....

Did Telectrix wire up Newbury race course?

was my first ever attempt at under floor heating.

 

[jaresquire]

Seen exactly that with cattle when I was a lad, I even walked into the field, though not that close, with the cable still fizzing.

 

[millwall ken]

BRB even tells us that cattle etc have a very much lower tolerance for electric shocks than humans.

 

[whats an rb4]

yeah kills cows at bottom of poles esp wet wood ones

 

[D Skelton]

Hmm, so maybe it was electricity afterall, I still fail to see however why the electricity would travel up one leg and down the other of any animal when my understanding has always been that it always takes the shortest path to earth. Also, how would the electricity energise something that isn't forming part of its circuit? It would be the equivalent of me jumping up and for the short while im in mid air, touching a live cable. I wouldn't get an electric shock regardless of the potential difference, well, theoretically anyway. Am I wrong?

 

[malcolmsanford]

It would seem what I saw this morning that the 2 horses that died where shod with steel shoes and the 3rd that survived had alloy ones, which would explain that.

It's as the guys said because the horses stride is so wide it will as in this case be able to pick up potential difference through the ground due to the difference in ground conditions. As we know it takes just milli-amps to kill or injure and becasue of the physical make up and mass of 4 legged animals they are more prone to electrocution.

It does highlight the age old argument we have on here with transporting earths from a TNC-S and why in the past it was only done with the permission of the DNO. My theory here is that there may have been a local cable buried and a joint failed or is failing, and it was "leaking" into the earth, and those poor animals picked it up.

 

[Burnt Fingers]

If you want to die from electrocution, four legs are better than two: Earth rods get buried and encased to prevent frying cats etc. Main problem with horses is, whereas we primarily wear insulating shoes, horses have a lump of mild steel nailed to each foot.

 

[pushrod]

Hmm, so maybe it was electricity afterall, I still fail to see however why the electricity would travel up one leg and down the other of any animal when my understanding has always been that it always takes the shortest path to earth. Also, how would the electricity energise something that isn't forming part of its circuit? It would be the equivalent of me jumping up and for the short while im in mid air, touching a live cable. I wouldn't get an electric shock regardless of the potential difference, well, theoretically anyway. Am I wrong?

Your second statement is correct, but it is not quite like that. Different parts of the ground are at different potentials as you move away from the source the potential decreases. Close to the source the potential could be say 200V and a metre further on it might be 50V. A potential difference of 150V, quite large enough to push a lethal current, depending on resistance.

Think of a bird landing on a live cable - both feet at the same potential, no current travels through its body and it is ok . That is similar to a human with both feet fairly close together in the decreasing potential field around the cut cable - both feet at almost the same potential so very little current travels from the leg to the highest potential to the leg at the lowest potential (forget the shoes which would reduce it even more)

Now if a large bird flies into power lines and touches two, because they are 3 phase they are at different potentials so large current flows and bird is killed. That is a bit like a large 4 legged animal, front foot at high potential and back foot maybe a metre or more away at a completely different potential. Current flows through the animal from from front to back across heart. (Obviously made worse by iron shoes nailed in).The horse is a better conductor than the ground. The shock the horse gets depends very much on its position in the potential field. A horse skipping sideways on to the field could survive but one orientated along a radius of it would get a much larger shock.

 

[tonys]

Heard on the radio there is a cable under the paddock.

 

[Paul.M]

Also another thing to consider is the weight of the horse pushing their steel shoes into the ground further than what the human walking the horse and the human is wearing leather boots probably with rubber soles.

Shoot me down in flames if Ive got my theory wrong here but. The horse has just left the stables, these stables are probably on a tt system. Sounds like it is an old cable under the paddock therefore the potential difference could be large if the fault is trying to leak to the rods.