Electric fencing.......safe?.......sometimes not?

Hope your wife is okay and has a speedy recovery! We use electric fencing tape and find it good (apart from when a certain hungry mare decided to take a run and jump today)

Although, had a bad experience during the autumy/start of winter and I think it has really scared my horse... was in the middle of the night- really windy etc and horse must have got spooked and ended up with herself wrapped in the tape until morning and I'm not sure but the battery must have came out!(thank goodness!) But it has still scared her so much and she would back away from it if on the ground... hence why she feels taking a run and jump is much better!

As long as you have it secure and safe, it (hopefully) prevents any accidents! :)
 
Have used it for years for strip grazing and I suppose its looking at pros and cons ie do I let my horse die of fatness or use the tape to help v the risk of getting caught.

Same can be said about barb wire, I know someone whose horses leg was severed by barbed wire and I still see that used a lot. Even post and rail I have gone to the field to find a rail off and the nails sticking out of it(luckily the horse has not stood on it)! However a friends horse got a nail from a wooden rail in the middle of its hoof this year and ended up in a bad way(surgery etc etc)

So everything has a risk. Fingers crossed my current horse is terrified of it. But another pony would jump it and there goes the risk of getting caught.So easy accidents always happen when you least expect it.
 
Well said Bowen4Horses, it would certainly appear Kerrilli has no morals or care for the grief of fellow horse owners. An accident is just that, and to suggest this poor woman didn't want other owners to be warned agaist the dangers is absurd and a plain stupid thing to say. I have witnessed accidents, but I do not need to name people or describe the exact events to deliver the danger message clearly.

I wish your wife a very speedy recovery.
 
simonepooter1, I'm not sure if you are personally involved with the accident that Kerrilli isn't going into details on, if so, I'm very sorry for you.

If you were just reading what she has written on this thread though I think you may be slightly misunderstanding. She didn't say owner didn't want other ppl to be know about fencing in any malicious way, just that she couldn't go into details of this accident. Which is understandable as others have pointed out.
 
simonepooter1 said:
Well said Bowen4Horses, it would certainly appear Kerrilli has no morals or care for the grief of fellow horse owners. An accident is just that, and to suggest this poor woman didn't want other owners to be warned agaist the dangers is absurd and a plain stupid thing to say. I have witnessed accidents, but I do not need to name people or describe the exact events to deliver the danger message clearly.

I wish your wife a very speedy recovery.
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I dont think this was her intention at all! From what i can gather she is not aloud to go into detail about it.. and hasnt. But she would feel better if everyone knew the potential dangers! I would feel the same. We are all very carefull and considerate on here when it comes to names. I have never seen a post where someone has named horses/people/areas/yards where there has been an incident! It would be very easy to trace someone if details were given, which is why we dont.

I know of a foal that got tangled in tape around its neck. Luckily was found early the next morning and vet was called immedietly and he made a full recovery.
 
kerilli said:
Yes, that's the sort of thing. utterly horrific. i hope they managed to save that one.
in TFC's defence, s/he was responding because the person who owned the horse didn't want me to warn anyone on here, and had pm'd TFC to ask me not to.
tbh if it had happened to my horse i would have wanted to tell the entire world, to try to prevent any horse ever having such a thing happen to it, or anyone else being so heartbroken. :( :( :( :( :(
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Does this not say "the person who owned the horse didn't want me to warn anyone on here" ? How exactly can you misunderstand that comment?

For TFC's to be asked to contact a member because of things they have written, then Kerrilli must be a very insensitive person, and possibly ignorant not to have listened to the wishes of the owner in the first place.
 
simonepooter1 said:
Well said Bowen4Horses, it would certainly appear Kerrilli has no morals or care for the grief of fellow horse owners. An accident is just that, and to suggest this poor woman didn't want other owners to be warned agaist the dangers is absurd and a plain stupid thing to say. I have witnessed accidents, but I do not need to name people or describe the exact events to deliver the danger message clearly.

I wish your wife a very speedy recovery.
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Well, since you seem to need more details...

Nowhere have I mentioned any specifics - names, or places.
I truly believe that people need to be warned so that they can protect their horses. Because electric rope is sold as fencing for horses I think people assume that it is safe for them.
If I hadn't seen what it can do, I wouldn't have believed it. (Oh, and Bowen4Horses, I didn't see what happened to my farrier's youngster, so couldn't comment on it first hand.)

As for "No morals and no care for the grief" and saying I am "insensitive and ignorant" - I think that's rather strong! Perhaps if you had been there the next day (were you?) while the YO was away, and had seen as I did another livery get his legs over the same strand of lower rope that caused the injuries, and had to extricate him, because the fencing still wasn't on (with still no mention of getting an energiser and powering up the fence so that it was safer) you too might have gotten desperately worried enough to be untactful. Horses don't learn by example - if only. I was terrified that another horse might get hurt.

I'd offered to pay for a mains energiser months and months before (still have the email to prove it) and be paid back later.
I feel horrifically guilty for being tactless at such a terrible time, and have apologised profusely (to no avail), and sad that this has apparently destroyed what I thought was a friendship, but I feel even more guilty for not pushing the issue more when it might have made a huge difference.
:( :( :( :( :( :( :(
 
horrid accident but imo all fencing can cause injury.

I have seen horses caught in tape (not rope) and get the most horrific burns and open wounds from it not breaking properly.

I have seen the aftermath of 2 horses breaking their legs on post and rail fencing from rolling too close to the fence and getting their legs caught under the rails.
 
I use the rope and will continue to do so. mine is all on wood posts. I will tell you why!
I started with tape but got fed up with horses getting out because the darn stuff had broken with the vibration of the wind. I also had a youngster get caught in the tape when it had broken and was left with a very nasty burn which scared her for life.

I have been around horses to know that no matter what fencing is used they will managed to damage themselves on it.

I have seen a mare roll into a plain wire fence and get caught - very nasty and took 6 months to heal.
A two year old TB colt ran into post and rails impaling himself in the chest so that the rain came out by his elbow. He did recover and go on to win races.
A friend had a filly clean jump over a 5'high and just as wide, stock proof hedge but never made the ditch and barb wire fence the other side. Quite messy is an understatement!
Another friend had a very good pony turned out in a walled field and it ran into the wall and broke its neck. She saw it happen from her bedroom window.

So, nothing is safe even if it was they would find a way to prove otherwise!
 
I find Kerilli to be one of the most consistently knowledgable and moral people on this forum. Why should she not warn people of the dangers of this type of fencing, if that is her experience? She has nowhere stated that is is the fault of the owner of the horse, only that her experience of the fencing is negative. I too have had a near accident with this sort of fencing, when my mare ran into it and turned a sumersault resulting in a damaged shoulder muscle and damage to her poll. Luckily she healed up, but it could have been a lot worse.
 
There is good and bad with any fencing. I have rope on my own yard currently, previously used the tape but it can get very windy at ours and we found that the tape would snap in the wind which isnt much use.

I would not use wire again after my own horse injured himself a few years ago as there is just no give in it at all. If rope is used properly with breaking points as others have said then it will give if a horse gets caught in it. I did suffer an injury last year with the rope where a horse got caught pulled a wooden post out the ground which hit me in the head and I ended up between 2 lines of rope, thanks to the breaks it snapped and whilst I did have some pretty nasty bruising I was ok. Had the insulators not snapped it could have been very different.

Not had a great deal of experience myself with post and rail but I did work with a horse last year who was recovering from a pretty horrible injury after a piece of rail went into his shoulder :(
 
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