High high for horse fence?

[MikePA]

<font color=blue>Another reason why even the tamest and calmest horse will suddenly shy or throw a fit over something they have not seen before.</font color=blue>
Like;

1. A drainage grate in the street.
2. A car parked along the road that wasn't there the last time you rode.
3. A garbage bag stuck in a bush that's close to the road.
4. Geese in a fenced in yard that's close to the street.
5. A donkey in a fenced in yard.

Been there, done more. /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

Horses seem to have remarkable memories for what they consider 'normal' on a route. There are only so many routes we can take when going for a ride and when things are different on the 'same old path', they recognize it and react. Sometimes they just slow down and keep an eye on it. Sometimes they stop and snort a few times, then continue once they are sure it's OK. Other times they stop and you have to walk them by it. Other times, well, you get to go back the way you came.

 

[weedsportpete]

Hi Mike (I've been keeping an eye on your horse-related posts since I heard about your horse/barn adventures at Farm Days).

Thanks to everyone for your answers/discussions. You've given me a lot of good solid info to work with.. I'll get the 8' CCA posts and put 3' underground, with the 48" wire (V mesh if we can afford it) 6 to 8 inches off the ground. These are 4" by 8' posts.. I'll use 6" by 8' posts for the corners and ends. I'll be careful with the ends of the wire fence to keep anything from poking out 9same with staples).

Why should one not use a single fence as a divider between two pastures ? Too much leaning on it? Fights across the fence?? Thats really not an option right now ($$$), but maybe in the future we will be able to put in a second parallel row and have a 'shute' between. We're concerned about horses getting loose while walking them to and from the pastures. While this should not happen as long as we are careful, we like the extra protection of having a shute with an extra gate.
But anyway, thats in the future.. Plus, the former owner put the fences right on the property line which annoys me because its hard to trim around the other side of the fences without depending on the generosity of neighbors (which we have at the moment..) Finally (on this mini subject), I'd love to have a 'shute' around the property (20 acres) to use as a general horse trail - the one thing we really don't have for boarders.

We have an excavator on the property finishing up our arena space and I'm thinking about having him take his big machine out and just push the posts into the ground. Is there anything wrong with that??

Finally, some of you like having a top/sight rail. Others have said that having rails opens you up to horses rubbing (and pushing) the fence.. so.. is it still preferable to have a sight rail??

Thanks for your help.. it is saving me a lot of time and headache!

Pete

 

[BILL_K]

Pete
I strongly disagree with using any kind of wire fencing around shod horses or mules. The damage that they can do to themselves if they should get a shoe caught in the fence is
not pleasant. I like 4 or 5 strands of 1/2 inch cable streched tightly with pipe gates. This is only my opinion but if you had ever had to put down an amimal that had torn off a hoof then you would understand.

Also check out http://www.electrobraid.com/! This lookk interesting. Has snybody tried it.


Billk
Good luck
Billk

 

[Justaplain]

Site boards: The farms in Ky run a site board half way up, so foals don't hit the wire headon. Anything wood will sooner or later get chewed, unless you keep it treated.I have used vinyl planking as a top board, which seems to work. Any single fence between pastures is going to take a beating. If I have studs involved I have run elec. parallel for a short term fix. [on the female side].bcs

 

[gerard]

We used the electrobraid for all ours, 5 feet high. It's all electric so the horses won't touch/lean, each tape is 2 inches wide, white, and is very visable and the install is pretty easy. Very horse safe if they run into it, just stretches like a big rubber band. Does take some fixin to re stretch but the horses won't get hurt. Gotta have shutes between pastures if you want to use both at the same time cause the horses will play/fight over it otherwise. If you only use one at a time to rotate pastures it's not as important. This fence also comes with t post plastic covers (PVC) as well as covers for the 4x4 corner posts. Not cheap but looks really nice. The shock is pretty impressive as I found out one day when I touched it with my forearm lightly to "test" the charge. I wasn't real happy cause all I felt was a slight tingle. Certainly not enough to discourage a horse. So I says to myself "Self, maybe your rubber soled moccasins is insulatin' you - take yer shoes off." Well "self" is dumb enough to listen and WHAM - felt like someone punched me in the arm!! Last time I listened to "self" for a LONG time................./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

 

[Hank]

<font color=blue>A garbage bag stuck in a bush that's close to the road</font color=blue>

The "universal horse killer" /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif, my wife used to call this, when she was a horse-mounted officer. She regularly took her partner near these things to enure him to them.

 

[GaryC]

After countless hours researching vinyl fencing, I believe the best fence is Country Estate Fence by Nebraska Plastics. They use pure virgin product and have been making fencing for over 20 years. There is a dealer just east of Dallas on Hwy 80 that can give you a great head start in your research. Fence Supply, 435 E Hwy 80 in Sunnyvale. Phone number: 972-226-0004. The owners work there and they are a big distributor of Country Estate Fence. The national website is www.countryestate.com. National phone: 800-445-2887.

There are a lot of companies out there with good sales pitches on inferior products. I feel Country Estates is the best product and, oddly enough, it is very reasonably priced.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

The Browns are great people to do business with. I've known them for years.

As for vinyl fence, well, the difference is sorta like the difference between steel pipe and plastic pipe for plumbing.

 

[weedsportpete]

Well we put in the fence posts, using a big excavator to push the posts into the ground. It was the only thing thats gone easy on this farm since we bought it. They went into the ground like a hot knife through butter. He said we couldn't do this in the summer with hard ground. Only thing we had to do was chainsaw one end of each post to make a point, then mark the post 3' up so we knew when to stop pushing. Hit a rock twice in 50 posts. If we had a proper assembly line, we probably could have hit one post every two minutes. We ended up going to TSC for more posts to almost double the number of posts we had originally planned to do.

Two of these fences will be shared by two pastures, so I guess we will have to put something extra for strength/keeping horses off it.

Thanks everyone!

Pete

 

[BB_TX]

GaryC - Thanks for the input. As you probably know, a search of the internet turns up countless sites of different suppliers/manufacturers, but no independent site I could find that compared/rated them all. Each one, of course, says theirs are the best.
Did you put up one of the Country Estate fences?