For small paddocks with wood board rails, is hot wire typically just ran on the inside of the top rail and maybe the middle rail ? Is it safe to run it along the inside of the bottom rails where a foot could get caught?
we use electric fence tape, not wire… we have one paddock that the top board is taped specifically to teach the new horses to respect the tape. Once they been hit by the charge a time or two they never touch the tapes again. We had another tape run mid height for the miniatures but removed it after they learned not to go near the tape.
A wire or tape at the bottom is something that we have never used
I don’t think a bottom or middle board wire is needed unless you have some particular behavior you are trying to prevent, like grazing under a fence and rubbing out mane. And if just fixing to the upper wood rail, a wire will be fine. I use tape where it is the sole fence and other locations where visibility of the fence is a big concern.
We actually ran electric along our middle and bottom boards as our ponies were grazing through the fence and rubbing out manes and pushing on our oak fencing. We used the really, really thin rope kind that can break easily if they do get a foot or something caught in it. We did not put anything on the top boards as they dont chew the oak and no one is on the other side of the fence. If we had paddocks side by side and they were reaching over the fence to play/fight, we would have added a string across the top as well.
We have done this for years and have not had any issues but the rope does get broken from time to time and we just replace when needed.
This!
I have three board fencing and we immediately installed hot tape across the top of the top board.
What seemed randomly we had a couple middle boards broken in weird spots. Then one day we saw it. Lower in the herd horse was grazing thru the fence, when boss mare would come along lower horse would quickly pull their head back in to move away. Sometimes the pretzel movements required to get that big blocky head and neck back into their area did not go well and lower horse would just pull and break the middle board. So glad we picked the wood we did because it did allow lower horse to get free without injury.
We then added a strand of hot tape between the lower board and the middle board. That has greatly limited the amount of broken boards we have. They do sometimes try to graze under the bottom board, but that requires them to basically lay down on one knee and chew sideways. (Please note, they have food inside this fence pretty much always.)
