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It all started with a horse and a rubber band

Tas Country Hour
Sir William Gallagher, Chairman of Gallagher

Sir William Gallagher's father invented the electric fence in the 1920s to prevent Joe the horse from scratching his rear end on the Essex motorcar.

The invention of the electric fence had a lot to do with a horse called Joe and a rubber band.

It led to a revolution in agriculture, and spawned one of the worlds biggest agriculture companies: Gallagher

It was current Chairman Sir William Gallagher's father who struck on the idea of a electric fence back in the 1920s.

And it was to keep Joe the horse from rubbing his rear end on the family car.

"Father - it was him and his brother in the 1920s," Sir Gallagher said.

"They used to have an Essex motor car, and Joe the horse was a bit of a rascal.

"He used to scratch his back end on it.

"My father and his brother were tinkerers, and they were playing with the magnet for the spark plug.

"They rigged this thing up, earthed the magnet and wound it up with a rubber band - a bit like a model aeroplane - so when the car rocked, the band spun, and you had ignition voltage on the vehicle," he says with a chuckle.

"Well they waited for old Joe the horse to have a scratch, but they never actually caught him doing it.

"But they came out one day and it was unwound, and they couldn't get Joe round that side of the house let alone anywhere near the car!"

"So that would have been the start of electric fencing," he said.

More than 90 years on the Gallagher empire consists of more than 10 companies, and spans the globe.

But Sir Gallagher keeps things in perspective.

He said Knighthood came as a surprise, but when I asked, he told me it wasn't the Regent holding the sword.

"I've met the Queen a few times, but we've got a Governor General, and he did the job with the sword.

"She's a nice lady of course - getting on a bit! But aren't we all," he said.

But as he sees it - the success of Sir Gallagher's business comes down to one thing only:

"It's all about managing grass," he said.

"It goes back to the old days really, you look at the amazing grasslands in Africa and the northern planes of North America, and that was control grazing.

"But it wasn't electric fencing, it was done with predators.

"The back fence was predators, because anyone who got behind got eaten," he said.

"You can really develop grass on that principle - you manage your system to maximise grass and that will maximise your animals.

"If you do it the other way around and maximise your animals and sacrifice your grass, you see the extreme of that in the northern hemisphere.

"They leave all the cattle in one paddock for months, and it all goes to weeds and rubbish," he said.

"Or they put them inside and then burn diesel to cut and carry. That's fine - but that's a very high cost system.

"That's worked because of very high subsidies, but the days of subsidies are over," he said.

"So it's not the production per animal that matters, it's the cost per unit of production - and we're very good at that in this part of the world."

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