My 2 horses (and a couple more who belong to friends) live in a very casual mostly 24/7 pasture situation. The horses are all older (youngest is 14), wise, and calm.
But if all goes well, we’ll have a foal (from the 14-year-old mare) next spring. I’m looking ahead to the changes I will need to make to our fencing specifically to keep things as safe as possible.
When we moved in, I took out all of the barb wire except along the road (which is double fenced); the landlord wanted the wire fence to stay along the road. I enclosed the horse area (about 6-7 scrubby acres) with e-rope, set mostly on t-posts with caps. I set the e-rope off the small barbwire section with long insulators.
We also have a small arena (fenced with wood boards) that can be used for turnout and a foaling-sized shed/stall attached to a corral with tall 5-pipe panels. I’m anticipating that mare/foal will do their first several weeks+ on their own moving between the foaling corral and the arena, and then transition to being all together with the other older horses IF everybody is behaving.
My question is, what changes would you make? I am planning to ask the landlord to let me rip out that last section of barbwire finally (perhaps offering to replace it with mesh). Our horses 100% respect the e-rope, but is it good enough for a foal? Should I add another strand, or switch to Horseguard? Is Horseguard notably safer than thick, sturdy e-rope? Do I actually need to do mesh all the way around instead, or something else? Clearly the whole thing is on a budget but that’s why I’m wanting to start working on it/paying for it now.