Fencing a field

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neweventer

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I am in the very luck position that we have just bought a new house with 3.6 acres of land. My instructor is two minutes away and I am able to use her menage.
I am hoping put up a small stable block and move my three there.
The land is "locked" by the garden to one side and a brook to two sides with only a 40m length of land that is open to another field. I wondering abpout fencing around the brook. Its certainly not jumpable, even for my bold eventer, my not so bold (broken) eventer wouldn't dream of it and the pony aint going no where. The brook is about 12m wide with very steep sides - probably a 10ft drop into water at the bottom. What do people think about fencing it off? I'm tempted to leave it as money will be tight. Has anyone any experiences of rivers/brooks as field boundaries.
 
I would want to fence a drop of any kind, but as it isn't a boundary fence as such, just fencing off a hazard, I'd be happy to use electric fencing, at least for a year or two. Too risky to leave in IMO, horses do have a knack of finding trouble if it is there to be found. I have a strand of electric fence at the top of a 6ft drop to lower ground, I just imagine chase games going over it.
 
I'd fence it, if only to prevent a horse/pony that is rolling from going in! Also saves on worries about spooked horses running 'blind' too.

Neighbours up at the farm had (still there, but no horses on farm now) a huge dyke in their field, it wasn't fenced & 1 pony went in about 6 months after they moved in & needed fire brigade to help to winch out.
Another farm further along the dyke (where it turns into a wide-ish stream about 15 ft+ at their point, mislaid 2 horses who slid in when the bank edging gave way after fast flooding & swum up river for nearly quarter of a mile before emerging in a cattle field on the other side.......
 
One of my fields has a burn on one side. It has about 6 ft drop sides and has quite tall hedge. I never bothered much about it before as it had the hedge around it, but a few years ago, I don't know what happened as there were no skid marks or anything, my young horse went through the hedge and luckily some branches of the hedge and small trees held her up. We had to heavily sedate her and it took about 10 of us to get her back out. Now, I have an electric fence all around it as I am not taking any chances even though it was probably a freak accident, but never the less it happened. Electric fencing is not that expensive and it would give you peace of mind.
 
Id also fence it in some way. Growing up i had a horse in a field that had a 300m side that was a brook, there were no accidents but now i look back and think how many near misses there were!
 
we thought the river at the bottom of our land wasnt traversable for similar reasons - until the day we spent wandering up and down the steep wooded hill on the other side looking for 4 horses whod decided itd be nice to go for a walk in the woods... ours are in fully fenced paddocks now- electric is a cheap solution if money is tight.
 
As above. Fence it.

If it is a new place, I would also install a mains electric fence unit and run a single wire on offsets to all your existing fencing to stop rubbing and make it extra safe. You can then put a two wire electric fence up against the stream. If your land is fairly flat, the posts only need to be 10 - 15 metres (perhaps even more) apart and it will cost pennies. Cable tie white tape to the top wire for visibility. Later, when you have more time, make a proper fenced slip way down to the burn so the horses can get down to drink when your water troughs are frozen!
 
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