Coated High Tensile Wire Fencing

[Pico_Banana]

@Texarkana

@OzarksRider That’s not totally surprising to me based on my childhood obsession with show jumping. Fences on course that are all white and fences with white pinstripes always result in a lot of visibility problems. I just never thought to apply that tidbit of knowledge to actual field fencing! Especially since to the human eye, the white is so much more noticeable. I have been making note of all the farms in my area with coated wire. There are a considerable number of farms with brown and/or black coated wire that blended in so well with the surroundings I never noticed it was there until recently.

@Pico Banana I have the same questions. This image from the Centaur Poly Plus page appears to have some sort of slightly thicker top rail? I like the look of that, although I’m not sure what that is. It doesn’t look like tape or pipe. https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0250/6951/products/black-polyplus-is_large.jpg?v=1541177035

Yes, I like the looks of that slightly thicker top rail but I have no idea what it is either. That’s not the official Centaur website, either. The official site doesn’t have anything like that.

I have black 4 rail wood fencing that I would like to coordinate with, so if I were to do the coated high tensile wire, my inclination would be to get it in black. But I wonder if the brown might coordinate okay if horses see that color better. Maybe an option would be to do three strands of the coated high tensile and then a top strand of HorseGuard tape to improve visibility, all in brown.

[ElementFarm]

We have no-climb with a top board for all our perimeter fencing. I love it. It’s safe, visible enough, and extremely low maintenance. It’s also easy to run a single strand of hot wire on the top if you have shared fencelines or a horse that wants to graze on the grass outside the fence.

The high tensile scares me. I have a few accident prone horses, including one who will paw everything and everywhere (is always sticking a foot through a stall guard or a through a gate). She’s currently on month 2 of stall rest for a nasty pawing-induced injury, but I digress.

I can see how having some of the high tensile hot would help, but still, I just see lots of ways a horse can get hurt, especially a foal which I have from time to time.
I hate how expensive post/rail or no climb is, but for me, I’d rather invest my money in safe permanent fencing than vet bills…

[BroncoMo]

I need to tack on to this and ask a few questions. I am going on like 8 years of wrestling over what to replace my fence with. I need to make a decision. Is this stuff truly as safe as people say it is? Because some still swear up and down that Electrobraid is one of the safest fences available and I had countless nasty injuries with it, to include a complete degloving. So I’m hesitant to believe people. Sorry, I have trust issues!

How far apart must the posts be? I don’t care if I have to do 8 feet apart but obviously with lumber costs these days (or maybe I go with pipe?), the longer I can stretch out between posts (safely) the better.

How do those in arid environments deal with grounding rods? We have the hardest time keeping fence hot around here because the ground is so damn dry. Posts can literally be wiggled out of the ground because of how much the ground dries up and shrinks away from the posts. So we have issues with grounding rods actually making contact with, well, the ground. That is my one hesitation with going with a hot fence… keeping it hot.

[imaginique]

I’ve had something similar to this for probably 30 years or close to it. I once had the brush hog get caught under the bottom strand and it stopped the tractor. Granted, it was not a particularly powerful tractor. Once my Arab gelding was reaching through the fence to get the grass on the other side. He got his leg over the bottom strand and ended up pulling it loose from the post. That strand still has a kink there 15 or 20 years later but he didn’t have a scratch. He was sore for awhile, but uncoated wire would probably have cut him to the bone and might have been a life-ending injury.

[moving_to_dc]

The farm I manage has electrified coated high tensile, and here at home I had non-electrified coated I high tensile. I MUCH prefer the electrified. The electrified coating is different, less slippery/stiff. I have had horses hit the electrified and bounce off, and I have also had horses take it down completely. Zero injuries, the electrified does not “spring back” and coil up, and I do keep it TIGHT.

The non electrified at home DID coil up when pulled down, very dramatically, and likely would have entangled a horse’s leg. None of my animals respected the non-electrified, they all reached thru to eat grass on the other side. In fact, all of the neighboring farms with non-electrified share the same issue, their fence looks horrible all the time from horses stretching it out, and often horses get loose once they realize they can just “walk thru” the fence.

As far as installation and maintenance, the hardest thing is bracing your corners and ends, after that it is SIMPLE. I prefer to install my tensioners at the ends/corners and NEVER in the middle of a line. I think it looks trashy to have a clean line of fence interupted by a tensioner that weighs the line down and just looks unsightly. My tensioners are also planned out and placed at corners and ends that are the easiest to access, not in the back of the field. NEVER install my insulators with staples or nails, dear Lord are they a PITA to remove when the insulator breaks. Star head screws are your best bet with insulators!

[OzarksRider]

BroncoMo, regarding your question about grounding rods in an arid climate–Horseguard Fence makes a bipolar electric tape that doesn’t require a grounding rod. I don’t have any experience with this, so can’t say how well it works, but it’s an interesting idea.

[OzarksRider]

Here’s a link to info about Horseguard: https://www.horseguardfence.com/index.php

[Texarkana]

@BroncoMo I have the same hesitations re: safety. However, this thread has been eye opening to me in the sense that only one post has anecdotes of injuries and the consensus overwhelmingly seems to be positive so long as you combine it with hot strands. Most other types of fencing, especially electrobraid, would have had more criticisms arise by now on a public forum. Then again, maybe experiences are still limited. Even though coated wire has been around a long time (thanks to this conversation I realized it’s been around quite awhile), I don’t think the general horse population has as much familiarity with it as other fencing types.

I hope someone chimes in with answers to your other questions.

[BroncoMo]

@Texarkana

@BroncoMo I have the same hesitations re: safety. However, this thread has been eye opening to me in the sense that only one post has anecdotes of injuries and the consensus overwhelmingly seems to be positive so long as you combine it with hot strands. Most other types of fencing, especially electrobraid, would have had more criticisms arise by now on a public forum. Then again, maybe experiences are still limited. Even though coated wire has been around a long time (thanks to this conversation I realized it’s been around quite awhile), I don’t think the general horse population has as much familiarity with it as other fencing types.

I hope someone chimes in with answers to your other questions.

It has been interesting to see how many people are happy with it and how long it’s been around. It’s been a while, but in doing some fence research I’m STILL finding people swearing that horses will “bounce off” electrobraid. Mine never bounced. They would pull down fence, break the insulators off the ends therefor brining down the whole fence line, get rope burns where they hit the fence, etc. The degloving was pretty traumatic, I was ten years old and I was the one that discovered the injury. Interestingly the heat from the nylon rope cauterized her leg and probably saved her life as she bled very minimally. But her athletic career was over before it ever started. So needless to say, I’m very skeptical of any fence. Which narrows my options haha. A decision must be made at some point

[Ponycatraz]

@BroncoMo

I need to tack on to this and ask a few questions. I am going on like 8 years of wrestling over what to replace my fence with. I need to make a decision. Is this stuff truly as safe as people say it is? Because some still swear up and down that Electrobraid is one of the safest fences available and I had countless nasty injuries with it, to include a complete degloving. So I’m hesitant to believe people. Sorry, I have trust issues!

How far apart must the posts be? I don’t care if I have to do 8 feet apart but obviously with lumber costs these days (or maybe I go with pipe?), the longer I can stretch out between posts (safely) the better.

How do those in arid environments deal with grounding rods? We have the hardest time keeping fence hot around here because the ground is so damn dry. Posts can literally be wiggled out of the ground because of how much the ground dries up and shrinks away from the posts. So we have issues with grounding rods actually making contact with, well, the ground. That is my one hesitation with going with a hot fence… keeping it hot.

I have my posts 8’ apart. It’s what the instructions recommended.

My previous fence in the old home we used the non-hot wires as ground. Our soil would freeze too much in the winter and we wouldn’t get a good ZAp 6 months out of the year even with 4 ground rods. The one caveat is that the horse has to touch a hot and grounded wire at the same time. With this style fencing you’d probably would have to run your ground strand as the more expensive version with the carbon stripe.

[Goforward]

I worked at a farm where a mare ran through electrified coated wire. Her only injury was very minor swelling on her chest and some plastic melted into her coat. The fence needed to be mended but it was a great outcome.

[Lolliver]

This past weekend my fence’s electric was tested twice. I have one mare who is sure that one day the fence will be off. She thought it was this past Saturday, so touched it with her nose to check it. I could hear the fence remind her that it was, in fact, still hot. Her reaction (spinning and running) also let me know she was testing.

My husband was mowing on the zero-turn and got too close to the fence. He told me the “zap” is pretty strong! :lol:

[sweetsalute]

Pretty much no one in this part of the world has any sort of board fencing…most is high tensile wire with t posts, usually electrified. I’m yet to actually know someone who’s had an injury. Horses tend to stay off the electric. I had a small yard setup (not electrified) once, horse panicked, went straight through and the only casualty was a couple bent t posts. Horse was totally fine.

[Cruiser12]

@OzarksRider

BroncoMo, regarding your question about grounding rods in an arid climate–Horseguard Fence makes a bipolar electric tape that doesn’t require a grounding rod. I don’t have any experience with this, so can’t say how well it works, but it’s an interesting idea.

it works!!

[PaddockWood]

@Goforward

I worked at a farm where a mare ran through electrified coated wire. Her only injury was very minor swelling on her chest and some plastic melted into her coat. The fence needed to be mended but it was a great outcome.

Interesting. I wouldn’t think it would be possible but I guess with horses anything is possible.

[crosscreeksh]

FWIW…we had coated high tensile wire under a top pipe fence…it was safe…for the horses…but if a horse dug at the fence and got a leg over it (he escaped safely by backing up) but we could NEVER get the stretch/bend/bow/kink out of the coated HT!! It started to look nasty!

[BoyleHeightsKid]

I really love coated high tensile that is installed correctly… I’ve seen foals and horses bounce right off of it. In the case with my TB gelding, it left a welt on his neck and that was the extent of his injury. The foal bounced off without a problem and went right back to trying to engage his mom in horse play. I would never ever have regular high tensile (seen some bad degloved cannon bones from it YIKES!), but the coated gets a big thumbs up from me. When we had a tree go down this past spring the tree laid on the fence but didn’t take it out. I only had to replace a few insulators and tighten the fence back up.

[LovelyBay]

We redid our fence three years ago with it and it’s been great! We have four stands, two electric, and two noon. Our property is very unlevel and wooded, so I needed something that could handle the contours. It’s been knocked off the posts by wildlife a few times, but it’s easy to put back up. There is a spot where it stretched when my husband hit it with the tractor but we just tightened it up and it’s almost as good as new. We have it in brown.

[Squirt]

I have had the coated high tensile (3 lines) with a vinyl flex rail on top for 12 years. I LOVE it! I also have woven wire around my stallion paddock for the same length of time. I HATE how it looks now. My boy has trashed it. I will be replacing it with coated high tensile next spring. I also just recently built another individual paddock with the coated high tensile with 2 lines of regular and 2 of the ones with the carbon fibers in it to make it hot. I love how easy it was to install and make look nice!
Knock on wood the ONLY injury I have had from this fencing in the las 12 years is my NEIGHBOR’S HORSE blew her suspensory getting INTO my pasture. Have had a couple go through it and nothing has broken, just some plastic residue left on their fur. Very low maintenance, just have to tighten it every few years.

I did have the first majority installed professionally and watched, learned and asked questions and now my husband and I install our own fairly easily!

10 out of 10 would recommend and when its time to build all of the infrastructure down here on our property (the horses are on my mothers property ATM) will be using again. Haven’t found another type of fencing that I like as well.

[Texarkana]

Bumping this back up:

A year after posting this, we purchased a farm entirely fenced in 5 strands of coated high tensile wire. I’m glad I was already on board with the idea!

But only the top wire is hot, and honestly, I’m not even sure if I will be able to get it working. The fence was installed on the post with staples; the hot wire has a plastic sleeve at each staple, but many of them have weathered and broken off entirely over the life of the fence. Even if I get it working, I’m worried my donkey will climb through the lower strands.

My question:

How hard is it to replace a non-hot coated wire with a hot one? We are talking over 10 acres of fence divided into multiple pastures.

If it is too challenging or expensive to replace the existing coated wire with hot coated wire, I can install insulators on the posts and run another 1 or 2 strands of regular hot wire. But I’d rather not do that for a number of reasons.