so it looks like we are bringing our guy home but need a fence ASAP. I was thinking 5 ft Tall round wood posts and doing electric tape. The guy I spoke with about installing said he would recommend a 4 ft tall fence for horses to save money since we are doing electric. Thoughts? Advice? Thanks!
IME you should be fine with 4 ft. 4-6 is pretty much the standard height for 3-4 board wood fencing in most necks of the fencing woods.
That ^
Now, as far as saving money, for an electric fence, I would not think that foot difference in height for the post you may use would make much of a difference, unless you are putting up several miles.
With electric, most any electric wire works just fine, if the horses respect those fences.
If they don’t, not any will work.
Many horses and cattle around here are kept safely behind a single little thin but hot electric wire around 24" high.
our sucess with electric has been limited since the horses will use the pony as a tester to see if the fence is charged
We had to go five feet for the perimeter fencing as one of my dear daughter’s eventing horses could and would jump the four foot fences to get into the corral where we kept our kid’s horse
Thanks for the advice! Luckily my guy has been on electric fencing his whole life and respects it. That is hilarious about the pony tester!
One thing I like about a taller fence is that the horses don’t lean on it because it is too tall to comfortably hang their heads over and put weight on that top rail. That really saves wear and tear on the fences. I suppose that doesn’t matter since you are using electric, but if you want to plan for the situation where you might not have electric, I would go for the taller fence. My horses have a taller fence, a bit over 5’ tall, and even the smallest one can still reach over for a carrot but none of them hangs out next to the fences.
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If you can afford it, I’d go for 5-ft so you have better options in the future if needed, as mentioned by PeteyPie.
But 4-ft works perfectly fine for most horses.
We set all of our corners posts as 5’ wood. We used t-posts for the runs (not everyone’s preferred) and set the at 4’. Sometime in the next few years we’ll be pulling the t-posts and replacing them as over time the ground has come up (grass, sediment, whatever) and I can’t raise the top line of the electric without replacing the posts. Just food for thought.
Thanks everyone! I think we are going with 4.5 
