We have all 14ft gates, which allow bigger equipment to be moved thru easily, gives “slip” room for mud, winter ice or snow to prevent hitting gate posts while turning to go thru with the spreader or clearing snow. Cost us more to start, but as already said, we have never been sorry having bigger gates.
I have those little wheels on my gate ends, which prevent sagging, make gates easy to handle. So our gate openings are slightly wider than 14ft to give wheel room when closed and prevent gate ends overlapping the post. Gates can swing in either direction to funnel horses into “field of the day” with rotational grazing. Some of these gates are hung on pins on one side of the post, allowing gate to be folded back against the post, out of the way of running horses for safety. Have fence guys cut off excess gate pin sticking out, then cover nuts with a piece of inner tube so no sharp edges stick out to get caught on.
Here, gates are either open or closed with fasteners. None are allowed to “swing in the breeze”, which can cause horse injury, is real hard on gates banging into things and pulling on the hinge end post.
We have all 7-bar pipe gates, with tighter spaced bars at the bottom, to prevent hoof going thru should someone paw at gates waiting to come in. But we also have a hot tape across in front of gates so horses normally can’r touch the gates at all. Sure saves gates getting beat on, horse injury. Tape has electric wire, red handles at both ends, totally removed for horses to go thru. Handles hook on 12 inch stand-offs with electric running thru the tape. I like the tape for better visibility, not springy or tangling like a plain wire does. We started using the hot tape after catching a young horse STANDING on the lowest pipe of gate! Quite the trick he thought!! Hot tape with 2 handles quickly fixed that problem.
