electric fence and foal?

[quietann]

[QUOTE=NoDQhere;6861821]
When we first put the mares and foals in the Horse Guard, you can watch the mares try so hard to “tell” the babies, “DON’T TOUCH THAT”. But every single one will walk right up to the fence and touch it. But I have never seen a foal go forward into electric fence. They wheel away and run to momma. Momma stomps her feet and says “I TOLD YOU NOT TO TOUCH THAT”! From that point on they are pretty darn careful.[/QUOTE]

That’s what my mare’s breeders experience is, too. They have some sort of electric braid or tape for all their fencing and have never had a foal injured by it. The babies learn pretty quickly!

They do have a foaling shed but once a foal is born and getting around OK they’ll let it and its dam out into the paddock, usually after 1 or 2 days.

Of course my mare arrived as a “surprise” so she was in an electric fenced paddock from minute one. They has leased her dam and were told that Honey would “stream milk for days” before foaling, but this time she didn’t. She was turned out with another mare and that mare’s 6 week old filly. Breeders went off to a show, assuming there was no way my mare’s dam would foal… and came home to a traffic jam on their little country road because people had stopped to watch the birth and admire the new little filly! Oops.

[JoZ]

I use coated wire fencing everywhere. It is a thick coating, and it is white. Mares and foals are turned out in these pastures as soon as they are a couple of days old. They are pastures (3-4 acres each) not paddocks, and they are grassy. I’d bet that makes a difference to the types of behaviors that are typical.

Our mares do not foal in the pastures. Our landlord had a calf born on the wrong side of his wire fence (it didn’t end well for the calf) and a foal that was either born outside or rolled outside the fence. The foal was fine but it could have been a disaster if someone hadn’t seen him running back and forth.

I will never use uncoated high tensile wire (several injuries later) but to be honest I’ve seen fewer problems with foals – due to their light weight – than adult horses. I watched my weanling (this was years ago) gallop into the high tensile wire and run the length of the field with various limbs bouncing in and out between the wires – while I turned to a quaking pile of mush watching her. Not a scratch on her. Older horses pull their big legs back/through the wires and cut them like a cheese slicer… :eek:

But to get back to the question, if it is safe, coated wire of some sort and it is correctly installed, I think it’s perfectly appropriate for babies. As an aside, the horses I have now that were hot-fence trained as babies are respectful of all types of fencing… even a strand lying on the ground!