Timely topic… we have had a bear patrol in the past couple of weeks on my property. I’ve been doing early morning and late evening turnouts just in case. I don’t worry about the big horse, but I have a darling 12 hand senior pony that isn’t as nimble as he used to be and two delicious little fat goats.
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I have lived in at least 3 areas that have black or brown bears. My horses are out 24/7, currently with a run in, or stalls in the past that open to paddocks with Dutch doors. I have never had any issues with bears bothering the horses.
In the past I had 3 board slip rail and post fencing with no electric, but never saw a bear in the pasture. I currently have 5 strand high tensile with a coated white hot wire at the top, and the second wire from the bottom also hot. Adult deer tend to leap the fence, and the fawns tend to negotiate their way through the fence. We also used flex fencing like Ramm or Centaur for smaller dry lot areas that the deer do the same with, but again, no bear sightings.
I did learn this lesson a few years ago. When I was an off site employee, I would usually take a homemade cake or something similar into the plant when I went in. One night I made a chocolate cake with peanut butter icing, and was so proud of myself for packing the car the night before. I walked out the next morning to find a teenaged bear standing upright next to the car, trying to find his way in.
I also love to feed the birds. I had bears actively remove the bird feeders and have their way with them, and when it happens once, it is going to happen again.
Around here, I try to do nothing to attract the bears. Feed is carefully put away and any spills are cleaned up. We are careful not to leave any food in vehicles or outbuildings. The electric fence is kept functioning and turned up. I sadly no longer feed the birds, but that also goes with beef farming. Trash goes into a dumpster, that while not bear proof, is kept far from the house and barn.
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I do have a recent funny bear story though.
We bought this farm a year ago, and it has a long farm lane that takes you to our driveway. There is a house and another farm back here in addition to us.
We had the property surveyed, specifically the right of way for the farm lane, so we could widen it and make it safer and easier to bring large trailers in and out. The work was recently completed, and a large cluster of trees and brush that was blocking the view to the left was removed, and has made everyone’s lives much safer. But, we can now very clearly see the next door neighbors house.
I went to pull out with a large trailer last week, looked left, looked right, looked left again, and saw a baby bear in the neighbors yard. Then I saw the neighbor walk out to the baby bear, grab it by a collar and take it onto their gated front porch.
Then I realized it was not a bear, but a Bouvier des Flandres! Needless to say, we had a pretty good laugh over the neighbor’s baby bear!
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I’m in the BC lower mainland. Our horses are actually in a green belt park and there is a resident population of bears, coyotes and bobcats. The horses are in runout stalls with high perimeter fencing around the barns and paddocks and yes, the bears can get in over the fences. The unaccompanied yearling bears are very curious and have climbed into paddocks and tried to play with horses in attended turnout (the turnout ring has a lower fence). We have three barns of horses and our barn put up two strand hot wire around the back where the paddocks face bush after a scary encounter. That seems to have helped. We ran the hotwire a couple of feet back from the fence.
I don’t think a bear could kill a full size healthy horse but they could certainly come in and panic them and cause injury.
No one lives at our barn so we don’t need to worry about the general run of household attractants like garbage, greasy barbecues, cooking odors wafting out, dog food, bird seed, fruit trees etc. We are also being really tight on attractants to manage our perennial rat issues.
My mother’s house also backed into a greenbelt and she had fun feeding cat food to the racoons until the day a long black arm reached out from under the deck and grabbed the dish as she filled it.
Anyhow bears roam and if they are in the area then they will wander everywhere and the dry lot area isn’t necessarily special to them.
Since you are PNW one thing I’d suggest is making sure you eradicate all the Himalayan blackberry on your property. For folks in other areas, it’s a horrible invasive ground cover (think kudzu x razor wire) with delicious berries that really draw the bears in July! Bears also like skunk cabbage in early spring when they first emerge.
I would suggest clearing out all blackberries and also clearing other brush back for sight lines. Reducing all attractants in home and horse area. And if bears are still lurking once it’s a dry lot run double strand hot wire outside the fence with one wire at nose level. Baiting it is brilliant.
Bears dont avoid anything. A full grown mama black bear is a huge hulk of impervious insulating fur with only a tiny nose and eyes vulnerable. They slide out of the shadows and they walk with a swaggering roll like old time thugs, knowing they are bigger and stronger than anything else in the forest. They don’t avoid. They just keep walking their routes seeing if any food has appeared since their last tour. Most times you don’t even see them.
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I don’t think the bear would bother the horses, but minis/small ponies would be a concern. However, if the bear was to cross through the dry lot and the horses were in it, I would be concerned by a horse going through the fence.
Funny story, friend of ours was parked on the road watching our horses one evening, he got to watch the black bear cross into the field, and then leave the field at speed as my elderly pony mare took exception to the bear. And chased it right on out. The funny part? The pony weighs maybe 700lbs. Meanwhile the two very large, much younger draft geldings were trying to get as far away from the bear as possible without actually busting the other fence line. Geldings! But it wasn’t a problem because that field is almost four acres, it probably wouldn’t have been funny if that had been in the quarter acre dry lot.
So I would make sure that the dry lot was not attractive (no food and no salt!), had an exterior hot wire at bear nose height, and that there was an easier option for passing through the area so that the bear isn’t obliged to go through the dry lot.
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Hmm, I hadn’t thought about not leaving salt out. That’s a good point.
Too funny! 
I don’t have any funny bear stories, but do see them out on the trails out and about. I don’t think we’re at “Bobbi the Bear” levels of human habituation yet, all of ours seem pretty flighty and conflict-avoidant. One year I had a horse almost dump me because a bear bolted onto the trail, seemed surprised to see us, and then took off the other way. I did have to chase an adolescent off my porch a few years ago by clanging pots and pans - they’re nosy before life experience knocks them around a bit!
What’s in the water up in BC?
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@beowulf, I have had them cross the trail in front of us while out riding, but have never had any issues with them. I camp frequently in Virginia, and they are common on the Virginia Highland Trail.
I would recommend though, that for the long term sanity of everyone!, see if you can adjust the bear’s route so the dry pen area just isn’t interesting.
I do have food (or at least dirty food tubs), water, and salt in my dry pen. But. It simply isn’t on the route the bears want to take: the driveway (past the apple and peach trees 
) or the big field are more comfortable options. In part it is because the dry lot has serious hot rope: three and in some places four strands from knee high to five feet, plus a stone wall on one side, plus some wooden top rails. On one and a half sides there are buildings, on another side dense hawthorn trees (inch and a half thorns). So the minimal amount of possible food inside an unpleasant area? versus easy travel routes to the neighbors (a vineyard on one side, an orchard on the other)? Bears are opportunists, but they are also very economical in the energy output.
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I don’t worry about black bears when it comes to horses, especially adults. My parents farm was home to a handful of bears that we would see regularly. They didn’t have a dog so the bears were pretty comfortable hanging out to eat clover down by the ponds. They tore one of the bee hives apart one time when the power went out, that was quite a mess. And on another occasion a sow with cubs killed a dozen hens.
My moms older gelding would put the run on bears if they tried to cross through the field, that horse will also put the run on cattle though if they got too close to the shared fenceline. The other horses didn’t care. The only animal that does tend to get them nervous is moose.
We currently have a resident black bear here. The horses are co-existing, no problem. We’ve seen him/her a few times, very nice to see wildlife like bears. Not so nice to see or HAVE a cougar though. But these sorts of animals are not usually a problem for large farm animals, they exit in the opposite direction, or simply ignore both humans and horses. Smaller farm animals are a different situation though, more likely to be seen as a food source.
Our resident bear is living in the deep bush below our house, I think. It’s a bit exciting to come face to face with him/her. The DH has done this a couple times this summer, walking through the trail to our irrigation system, to operate the pump. But the bear runs away when they meet. There has been steaming bear shit on our lawn, so he/she gets around. We are very careful with garbage, keeping it out of reach of a bear. It’s a lovely bear, healthy, sleek and shiny. Adolescent bear… not full size yet.
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We had four grizzly bears relocated out of our horse pasture. They never bothered the horses at all and the horses didn’t care about them. They didn’t want to be locked in a stall with a bear but having them in the pasture, they just gave them a swerve. In the mountains (MT) we’ve never had a bear problem and I think that is largely b/c bears don’t want to deal with horses.
Since your dry lot is for winter use I would proceed with your plans. There is no reason for a bear to go through the effort to get in your dry lot except possibly to eat horse crap or clean up any feed that is down (not hay). We have tons of bears here, black and grizzly/brown, and they seem to get enough to eat with all the bird feeders, applle trees, garbage cans etc (in addition to their natural food sources) that they aren’t likely to want to get in a ring with a few whirling horses to peruse the horse poo selection.
The electric fences that are put in to keep bears out pack a wallop that I wouldn’t want one of my horses to get or risk myself getting. A couple strands of hot wire would likely not even slow down a bear. But it might be a good reminder for your horses to keep their cool and stay in the fence even if a bear gets close enough to the fence to get them extra worried.
a juvenile brown bear raided the neighbors bee hives then wandered thru the pasture where horses were turned out. My horse was so freaked out he refused to go out to graze for 2 days.
