I am redoing some old wood fencing. If I was staying with wood, I would put separation between the paddocks, so that there would be no shared fence lines. Currently shared fence lines have been a real pain.
However, I’m planning on going to electric coated wire, with the top rail being electric flex. When you have an electric fence, how bad are shared fence lines? Will this get rid of my problems, or should I still do separation between the paddocks?
The paddocks are each 1.5-3 acres.
A space between is the safest in any set-up.
You still may need electric if you have one that’s determined to try and reach grass outside the fence. I actually had to run electric around the bottom of my mare’s paddock, halfway between the ground and the board, to convince her that 17hh of horse should not try and crawl under the fence because that patch of grass looks awesome. Yes, the vet bill from finding this out the hard way was painful. :mad:
I space them wide enough so horses can’t reach across to touch another horse. Helps if space is wide enough to drive the mower thru, to save time trimming things.
Even with electric, I would NOT have only a single fence between horses. They will still strike or fight if they choose to. Got to fix a hock injury with only that single fence between two horses striking at each other! They broke the wire. Never again!!
What goodhors said. If they fight or kick at eachother through the fence, they will find a way to get hurt no matter how safe your fence is.
From my personal experience, may I suggest no less than the width of your mower plus 12 to 18 inches between fence lines.
I agree that space is best. However in the boarding situation I am in now, all paddocks share fenceline when they are next to each other. For the first year it was a pain in the butt, broken fence boards EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. A year later now, I have a new horse, and he was getting bit over the fence because he and his new ‘fence buddy’ were in fact playing, but didn’t know when to STOP. The BO put a single hotwire over the top board around all the paddocks, and suddenly EVERYONE respects the fence line. No more fussing, no more playing, no more horses pushing entire lines of fence down because of their itchy tush… Hotwire is my new friend. I used to be scared of it. Now my horse won’t come within 5 feet of the fence. I like it that way. Less room for injury. Though of course, if there was spacing between paddocks, those issues would have been a lot less in the first place. It just wasn’t feasible for the BO to redesign and re-fence the paddocks.
8 feet is the pretty much the norm for spacing. 6 may work but certain horses may find this close enough to really try and stretch over and defeats the purpose of double fencing IMO. Double fencing is expensive.
Top hot wire extenders can be had. Most of the ones I have seen are between 6" and 18" and are fixed to the inside of the top rail. IMO and experience the longer the better.
I have “MacGyvered” longer ones using ¾ black poly pipe. Drill or “notch” a hole in the end the hot wire runs through. I use poly rope. I “crush” flatten and bend the end being attached to the fence in my vise and screw to the top rail. If I didn’t get the “bend” just right I just take my small propane torch and heat the pipe a bit and bend it to the proper angle. Takes no time.
We have some shared fenceline (electric) and some with space between (for gender separation or isolation pens). I find both work fine, but I do prefer the shared fenceline for better use of space and because they can then share a waterer.
One thing with the Electric flex fence though, I think the electric is only on one side, so may not work how you want it to.
[QUOTE=FieldstoneHollow;8298083]
I am redoing some old wood fencing. If I was staying with wood, I would put separation between the paddocks, so that there would be no shared fence lines. Currently shared fence lines have been a real pain.
However, I’m planning on going to electric coated wire, with the top rail being electric flex. When you have an electric fence, how bad are shared fence lines? Will this get rid of my problems, or should I still do separation between the paddocks?
The paddocks are each 1.5-3 acres.[/QUOTE]
Separating the paddocks is the most safe way to layout your fence. 8 foot is minimum but 10 or more is better. If you plan to plant trees in the future then 12 or more.
The electric might depend on location, if you are out in the South west in dry desert like conditions then you will have major problems with electric.
Those are small paddocks so you are not talking about that much more fence.
Thank you everyone. All your experiences are really helpful.
I was worried that horses would still play / fight over the fence line, as Flash44 and Goodhors mentioned.
Since you two have seen this, I will be safe and do electric paddocks with the spacing. I might leave 1 shared fence line between the closest 2 fields, but the rest will all have spacing.
I was really hoping that all the experience would be like “One Two Three” where they added the electric, and the problems went away. But I guess it depends on the horses.
