Fencing drama!

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Laur

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My two horses are kept in a 2 acre field with another two horses for the summer to restrict their grazing. The driveway of the yard runs up the length of the field and the fencing is sheep wire and barbed wire. So... i went up the yard on wednesday to find the YO had put electric wire on the top of the fence. I thought this was because one of the horses has a fly rug on so she leans on the fence and eats the grass the other side and the rug stops the wire from hurting her. Turns out the horse leant over the wire on wednesday and got the front fastener of her rug caught on the fence and she pulled the whole length of wire fencing off the posts as she struggled to free herself and in process pulled off a shoe! Luckily she was unhurt but YO was fuming as he had to replace the whole of the fencing. im surprised none of the horses escaped as there was no fence for 25 metres to stop them from making a run for it! So hopefully she has learnt her lesson and will no longer want to lean over the fence as she will get a lovely electric shock if she does now!
 
somehow don't think a strand of electric fencing will stop one of them getting hurt.

I've seen the effects of barbed wire on a horse. We had electric fencing running 3ft inside the barbed wire in order to stop them eating the hedge and also to stop them getting hurt on barbed wire. Horse went through fencing and didnt see the barbed wire. Result? Flank slashed open.
 
I read your post and can't believe that there are still so many horses in fields fenced by barbed wire and sheep wire. I, too, have seen the results of barbed wire. Sheep wire is also terrible - horses can easily get a foot through one of the squares and when they pull back the result can be awful.
 
sheep wire and barbed wire is no good for horses at all.yo owner has no right to fume,it is you who shoulb be really angry.if the yo is taking your money you should have safe fencing.
 
We have sheep wire
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But there are sheep in the field......
 
i have seen a pony that lived on a sheep farm and had got its foot through one of the squares,became tangled and thrashed about.not nice.
 
Where we lived before, the paddock was fenced with sheep wire (not our paddock, no chance to use anything else at all, just had to live with it - or not have the horse; what would you do?!) I tied plastic bags all along the fence line, got told off by the farmer for making it look like a gypsy site (no offence to gypsies, you know what I mean) horse couldn't have cared less about the bags and was always found with his head over trying to reach the grass verge and would make real sags in the wire which looked tattier than the bags so farmer put strand of barbed on top. That didn't make any difference either, horse was crafty enough to miss the barbs when leaning over. He regularly got his feet through the bottom holes, got it stuck sometimes between shoe and hoof and would just stand there waiting for me to rescue him; that fence had more holes in it than wire! Electric in front of it made not one bit of difference to him, he'd just lean until it gave way. Now put him in a field with hedges as the boundary and he'd stay well clear, in fact had a hell of a job to get him to jump hedges because of that, had to cut one down and lunge him over it loads of times before he'd even think about it - not funny when you're on a fun ride and they're nearly all hedges!!
You are all right, wire can be very dangerous but sometimes we do not have a choice and it just has to be made as safe as possible. As far as Wilf went, he did not respect wire at all, nothing deterred him but luckily, he was a calm youngster who was brought up with it virtually from the start (had him at 18 months).
 
I replaced ll the barbed wire and sheep netting from my property, afetr thre ruined rugs anbd a near miss with my oldeest, and supposedly wisest mare got her foot through. 1/2 was redone with P & R, the other half with posts, plain wire top and bottom (tensioned) and a run of electric rope through the middle. My silly young TB rolled next to the wire fence and got her leg through, she literaly cheese wired the fur and flesh of the front of her hinnd cannon. So I am now about to replace the bottom wire strand with more electric rope. With hindsight I think any future fencing will be posts with 3 stands of electric rope.
 
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