We have a newly built electric round pen, its two strands of polywire and a fifty footer. So far it’s worked wonderfully. I’d just like to hear some experiences and thoughts on polytape and electric round pens? 
So if the horse bumps the rail, he’ll get a shock? No, that doesn’t seem like a good idea to me at all. Or maybe you mean you’ll turn the electricity off before you ride or train in the round pen? I guess that would be OK, but the horse will still think the juice is on, which is going to make him afraid to make a mistake.
What specifically did you want to talk about?
It sounds like the worst idea out to me, sorry.
Yuck. Horse is paranoid to touch the tape, whether on or off, and you couldn’t pay me enough to ride in it.
Working with youngster, particularly, in the round pen there can be “contact.” A sturdy structure, like good quality corral panels, means the contact is “no harm, no foul” and the horse learns to avoid it because it doesn’t get them anything and is annoying. Bumping electric tape has a wide variety of possible outcomes, few of which are beneficial to the training process.
That’s a long way of saying “Very Bad Idea.”
G.
Somehow I don’t think the BLM would approve of that to hold a newly adopted mustang. It’s round, but it’s not a traditional “round pen”.
Wait just one second - are you going to use it for this young horse http://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/showthread.php?442662-Completely-frazzled-and-in-need-of-advice-and-comforting? Please don’t. Build a nice one with solid walls taller than he can jump.
You don’t need a round pen to train a horse period.
Have you thought about maybe getting a trainer to help you? If you are considering an electrified 50-foot round pen to use in training a weanling, my immediate thought is that you are inexperienced and would really benefit from some professional mentoring. I say this as someone who, after more than 6 years of re-riding, am only just now beginning to grasp how little I know about horse training.
[QUOTE=ReSomething;7675010]
Wait just one second - are you going to use it for this young horse http://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/showthread.php?442662-Completely-frazzled-and-in-need-of-advice-and-comforting? Please don’t. Build a nice one with solid walls taller than he can jump.[/QUOTE]
Yikes, I hope not. Especially with the untouched appy.
Add me to the list of people who think a hot round pen is a terrible idea.
Especially one that is only two strands of poly wire. It’s not even an effective visual barrier.
[QUOTE=LookmaNohands;7675041]
You don’t need a round pen to train a horse period.[/QUOTE]
Absolutely true. But it’s a very useful venue.
G.
Yep, have to go with the others & say bad idea. Watch what happens when a horse gets shocked. See that bolt? You don’t want to be in a small round pen when that happens with an unhandled horse.
The horse needs to concentrate on the handler, NOT worried about getting shocked. And once he’s been shocked, his mind will be on staying away from the “sides” of the round pen…therefore closer to the handler.
If you turn off the electricity it would work out till the horse decided to push up against it…then you will have a mess.
Tom Dorrance said the best round pen would be made o/o chicken wire, because the handler has such cooperation from the horse it would never test the round pen walls.
But then, most of us aren’t Tom Dorrance 
Instead of this, take one of your relatively square corrals and just block off the corners with panels. Works just as well.
Might I add: This is temporary. So far my mare and a green gelding have both worked wonderfully in it. They know what electric fence is and have a healthy respect for it. Not fear, respect. The colt will be worked in a square paddock until he learns to accept touch and lead, tie, etc. My colt and my round pen have nothing to do with each other. I have heard of a few people who use 1 inch electric tape for their round pen and this is what I did. The two white one inch pieces of tape are definitely visible. I was just wondering if anyone has had experience with this because so far it’s working wonderfully. And round pens are controversial. Some like them, some don’t. It doesn’t mean your anything if you use or don’t use a round pen. I personally love using the round pen. It works his wind and keeps him focused on me, teaches him to bend and flex and work at liberty.
I have no experience with them. I have never seen an electric round pen, and I would not work a horse in one.
I HAVE ridden in an arena that was bounded by electric tape - which was OFF, as in never electrified, the tape was just there for a visual barrier.
What are you using as posts? What do you mean by “it works his wind” - are you working a weanling in a round pen at speed?
Sorry to be such a negative Nancy - I just, in my experience starting horses, including from weanling up - I wouldn’t use an electrified round pen, and I would be very careful about working a young horse at speed or excess on a small circle (very hard on developing legs).
I’m imagining the train wreck when your steady eddy, or green horse or baby have a moment, leap up, strike out and catch the tape…and you are suddenly chasing a loose horse still attached to a trailing lunge line and 100 feet of white tape. Or you and horse, if you are riding, become a leaping, bucking, panicking accident. There’s a reason why things are built of certain materials and not others. You couldn’t pay me to ride or work a horse in a round pen made of whit tape,
let alone if it were electrified!
Add me to the list of people who would never use it. Even for riding horse, yes they may respect it but that won’t help you if they stumble and face plant into the electric wire. Ouch!
And as for working with the weanling I wouldn’t be doing any sort of round pen work with him til he was old. I would just be using a stall to get to being touched and worked with.
My favourite round pen is a solid wall 10 feet tall. They can’t jump out and they have to concentrate on you. Only downside is that you sometimes get some big spooks when a crash or bang happens outside or someone drive by.
P.
It seems like an accident waiting to happen to me.
Are you using electric tape or strands of polywire? Because now you’ve mentioned both, and they are very different things.
Working a horse in a small space where the fence bites is really a pretty good recipe for disaster–even more so with young and green animals. There is so much risk of things really going south.
If you want to work in a round pen, then INVEST in an actual round pen. There are places where you can go cheap with horses. The small space where you’re working young, green critters is not one of them. You want something that will actually hold up in the spaces you put pressure on your ponies.
BTW, what is this tape/polywire hung on? T-posts? Are they capped/sleeved?
How about THIS story. Friend leads horse through electrobraid ‘gate’ - long tailed horse swings tail at fly, grabs electrobraid with TAIL.
Long Tailed Horse TAKES electrobraid FENCE on a holiday, popping it off step in posts on the way.
Only because the fence was off is the horse still in Shelby County.
Only God’s grace left her sound after completely hobbling herself in a multi-loop nightmare noose.
No way in Hell I’d use a hot tape ‘round pen’. That’s foolish.
I have a roundpen and I use it constantly for my ancient experienced horses, and my super-flighty young Arab. All of them, at one time or another, get the zoomies and tear around the pen, slide, hit the panels, etc. It’s not and “if” it is a “when” - it is going to happen to everyone who uses a round pen.
I have seen the ads on the HorseGuard website/catalog about making a round pen with their tape. It surprises me that a company that makes such a wonderful, safe, and popular product could endorse such a dangerous idea.
Your horses do not “respect” electric fence in the same way they “respect” humans. They downright fear it once they have been shocked. Don’t believe me? See what happens if the fence shorts out and pops/cracks when they are around. Their demeanor does a complete 180* - ears up, heads up, nostril flared, some will even bolt away at that simple “popping” sound. Even the horses at the therapeutic center I work at loose their minds when the electric fence pops, and you don’t find much more level-headed and calm horses than those.
When they are conditioned to fear the electric fence, they are not going to want to work on the rail. They are going to want to work well inside it, and I bet they will always be pre-occupied with thinking about their proximity to the fence. It may not be “visible” to a green horse-person’s eye, but I bet it is there.
Lots of people, me included, use 2 strands to cross fence a pasture. Some people use 2 strands as a perimeter, though I think they are crazy to do so. Two strands CAN NOT be configured to contain a horse that wants to be on the other side. Two strands are too low, and can be jumped. Make the top strand high enough to discourage being jumped, and then the gap to the 2nd strand can be ducked between or under without getting the punishment of a shock. I’m betting that if you put pressure on your horse to work the rail in a 2-strand electric fenced round pen, that the horse will realize he can easily escape your pressure by simply ducking thru or jumping the fence.
And then you have the issues that others have brought up. When your horse snags the electric tape - polywire - rope, how do you think he is going to react? Slide to a stop and stand there while you untangle him, or freak out and head for the hills?
Not a good idea.
That’s got to be the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard of.
