The grass is greener on the other side
Posted by Bill on Apr 19 2009 at 08:45 pm | Tagged as: Horse Health, Pasture, Horse Ownership Costs
In the past couple of weeks we’ve been traveling quite a bit. At one point there was no one home for about 7 days. During that time our horse friend Shari kept an eye on the place and fed our outside animals (the dogs were at a kennel). Several days into our vacation, we got a voice message from an older neighbor saying our horses were out and were roaming the neighborhood and highway and they didn’t know what to do since they weren’t horse people. In fact I think they thought we were still home because we often arrange to have cars in our driveway so it doesn’t appear as though the house is empty. We immediately began dialing through our list of horse rescue contacts to ask for help. We were about 2,000 miles away from home at this point. Unfortunately, almost all of our horse contacts were off doing weekend things, far from home. We finally reached a vet friend and the girl we bought Romeo from (thanks guys!) and they quickly led the horses back into the pasture. The fence was down in one section. To make a long story short, although the fence was repaired each time, this has happened a total of four times in the past two weeks. Our horses have learned two lessons:
1) There is an abundance of yummy green grass on the other side of our fence.
2) It doesn’t take much for a 1,000+ pound horse to knock down a wooden fence.
As soon as we got home, I bought a bunch of new fence boards and have been replacing weak boards. Each time, they find a new section to push on. Often it’s Cash, scratching his bottom on the fence. Sometimes it’s Valentine, giraffing over the top to get to the grass just beyond. Whoever the culprit, it needs to stop! The most recent time was last night and fortunately we were home to resolve it. When you see headlights in your driveway at 11:30 PM, you have to know something is wrong. It was feeding time so rounding them up was easy but these escaping episodes are at best annoying and at worst dangerous. We spoke about the need for an electric fence last year but when the grass stopped growing, the horses stopped pushing the fence down. This time we’re going to do it. We’ve got some rough measurements and I’m calling Electrobraid to place my order. We spent hours today (60 holes drilled, 60 screws) adding inside boards to the top row so each section has two rails on top. We’ll run a strand of electric fence along the top to keep them off of the fence. Unfortunately it looks like it takes 10 days or so for shipping. We’re paranoid every time we hear a car nearby and are afraid to leave the house for fear they’ll get out while we gone!
I need to verify this with Electrobraid but the price for the rope and accessories, plus shipping, comes to a reasonable $900 or so (1,200 foot section). With this system, not only will we be able to help fix this wooden fence issue, we’ll also have a system we can use to replace our barbed wire sections, something we’ve been meaning to do since we got here. It looks like this project doesn’t want to wait anymore.
Any of you had trouble keeping your horses on the right side of the fence?
We have our horse in a 2 acre pen with barbed wire accessorized by 6 inch bull wire. My goats get out but the horse has never gotten out. However, we bought a portable electric corral to use when we take the horse on trips with us. It didn’t even last the night. I checked on her around midnight and she was ok. When my father-in-law got up to go to work at 4 in the morning, she was gone and the fence was busted. We found her at the end of the road, completely keyed up. Luckily she went to the dead end and it was fenced off. Needless to say, we won’t try keeping her in with only electric fencing again. Corral panels for us in the future.
Wow. Do they make gps tracking devices for horses? No ideas here (we did hot wire our fence to stop our escaping beagle, but it hardly compares…)
Good luck!
There is hot-wire attached to all of the wood fences out at my boarding barn. Only the most persistent (bull headed?) horses have run through it. I have watched some of them perform the most amazing acrobatics, however, when attempting to reach a patch of grass on the other side of the fence. They can twist and stretch to incredible lengths when motivated! And all without touching that ever-present hot-wire.
Why electrobraid? Tractor Supply could have you set up with regular livestock efencing today. (Or other farm store). We’ve used standard efencing for almost 10 years and the horses respect it even when it is off. Once a deer ran thru it, but the horses still did not go thru where the wire was.
Good luck. Nothing scarier than hearing about horses being out! Especially when you are out of town! Glad it all worked out.
Blessedly our horses have never escaped, but they did have the cattle panel fencing so pushed over trying to get to the grass on the side that we knew it was only a matter of time. We began dividing the field into 3 sections and have two of them electrified to this point. Our 2 horses seem to respect the new fencing-don’t go near it and it has eased our minds significantly. I was opposed to it at first, but now I’m so glad we’ve chosen to do it, plus having the field divided allows us to rotate the guys in and out as we desire. I think you’ll be glad when you’ve finished!
im a new horse owner, well ive had my two horses for about a year, but im still verry new at it, when we first go them we put up a barb wire fence, but they kept pulling there mane out in it and getting hurt, so we tore it down and put up a wooden fence, and like your horses they either somehow get there heads throudh the middle of the boarda and they also lean over them, so about 3 months ago we went to the hardware store and got a cheep role of wire and a electric box, and it works so well, they touch the wire, get shocked once, and never go near the fence, we havent had to replace a board in 3 months! i dont know if you can reply back or not, but if you can i was wondering what you do with all the poop from cleaning there stalls, we have a big ditch out behind our pasture weve been putting it in, but i was wonndering if theres some kind of company, like a composte or something that halus it off, ive read about it in magazines but not sure, what do ya’ll do?
danielle, when I clean my run-in shed, I put the manure in a grass and seed spreader that we have removed every other tine from the dispensing bar. I run this behind my 4-wheeler throughout the pasture and it distributes it like fertilize. The manure is broken down some by the time I get out there to do this though. I only have one horse and she spends more time in the pasture than her run-in shed. We don’t have a barn for her.
We got the spreader at Home Depot. I have a pic of it on my blog.
Hope this helps.
Danielle, we’ve been piling it up for a while and eventually (after a long time) it breaks down. But I’ve found what I think is a far better solution. Aerated composting forces air into the pile which causes it to break down faster and with little human effort (no turning). We’re in the process of designing this setup at our farm and in the next few weeks I’ll be touring a facility that is already doing it and will report back on my findings.
We choose Electrobraid because we’re not just adding it to our wood fence, we’re also replacing a few large sections of barbed wire. With the ability to space fence posts at up to 50 feet apart, it’s really economical, even with four strands. Plus their warranty is 25 years. I’ve read a lot of positive things about them from existing customers.
Whew! Scary how they keep getting out. I’d not be able to sleep at night for worrying.
So far we’ve been really lucky with our mare trying to escape, but we have 5 1/2′ high wire horse fence installed over 1/2 our paddocks and the other half is pipe fenced with horse fencing attached. It’s all very sturdy and safe with nothing to break or bend.
We use the same fencing for our goats and llamas and it works great at even keeping the escape artist goats in, too.
Here’s hoping your electric fencing does the trick!
~Lisa
Danielle,
I must admit I was quite amazed when I first read your blog.. Giraffes and escape artists, oh my! Having spent the last 25 years (not much short of my life) with horses I have encountered electric fencing many times over. Yes, I agree. It can be a good thing. With any animal they learn quickly that when you touch that white thing it hurts. And yet, i have also seen horses wrapped up in it running lose around paddocks. If you put it at the top of your fence I think you are still going to have problems. Your horses will still be able to reach under the fence and potentially push out the fenceline that way, and they all learn very quickly that the electrical zap is short. (as my dog can tell you about her electrical fence!)
One thing I might recommend you try in addition to your fence is to turn your fence boards. Most farms I know keep the fence boards on the inside so if the horse leans against the fence the boards wont pop off the other side as you are experiencing. The other reason we keep the fence boards inside is for safety reasons. Those posts can be hazardous. They offer horses too many opportunities to hurt a leg or ankle by merely stumbling against the post, and horses playing can be injured by running into them. Horses that rub against fence posts can recieve splinters we don’t see which lead to infection and expensive veterinary bills. I know it sounds farfetched but believe me it isn’t. With the amount of time and money you are spending to replace fence boards you may find it useful to move your fence boards to the inside.
Best of luck,
Rebekah
[…] Posted by Bill on Aug 06 2010 at 03:47 pm | Tagged as: Horse Health, Pasture, Horse Ownership Costs I guess I should have expected it because it seems just about every year our vacation is interrupted by a phone call from a concerned neighbor about our horses roaming the streets. This one was no exception. We were 400 miles away in Savannah, GA and the phone rings. Luckily our backup system worked this time. The last time this happened, all of our horse contacts were away also. […]