Fencing (equi wire)

[Malibu_Stacy]

My parents recently bought property plus land, so I'm in the awesome position of moving up there and keeping the horse (plus to be found companion pony!) at home. However, the owners before us fenced the perimeter of the land with stock fencing. This is fairly sturdy and secure but definitely not my first choice for horse fencing, particularly in light of one of the horses at my current yard being pts a couple of months ago following a freak accident with wire fencing.

I can't afford to redo the entire perimeter with post and rail so had thought to leave the stock fencing (since it is relatively sturdy and will prevent neighbouring sheep/ cows/ alpacas invading) and have a second internal line of electric put up. I had a fencer visit this morning and he suggested I use 'equi wire'
http://www.gallaghereurope.com/downloads/horsefence_eng.pdf

Has anybody got any experience of this? As far as I can tell its main benefit over electric tape would be longer lasting due to higher tensile strength. As the fencer explained it, the higher tensile strength was compensated for in case of horse accident by elastic regions?

 

[stencilface]

I think this is what we have down one boundary, but it's not electrified. It's pretty good it think, you can get a lot of tension in it and it's pretty easy to put in once you got the big straining posts in. I put ours up with my dad.

 

[Malibu_Stacy]

Thank you - I will probably wimp out and let fencer install it all whatever I end up getting. My excuse is I'm still in East Anglia except for the odd visit until Xmas. Whereabouts in Leeds are you if you don't mind me being noisy? New place is in between Leeds and Harrogate

 

[TBB]

We have a lot of our paddocks fenced with the gallagher equi wire (the white wire with the thin black line and the plain wire through it) It was professionally put up and we have it for about 16/18 years. it works wonderfully well with both horses and cattle (not so good with sheep) and is electrified 24/7 365 days a year on a mains fencer. Not one horse has cut or damaged themselves on it and it is used with everything from foals up to oldies, we have 2 strands dividing fields into paddocks and one strand along ditches/hedges and on occasion a young foal has collided with it but suffered no injury (they sort of bounce off it). I wouldn't hesitate to install more of it if I needed more fencing

 

[Malibu_Stacy]

Great, thanks TBB

 

[stencilface]

I'm also kind of between leeds and Harrogate. Kind of in the middle between Bramham and Harewood (can hack to both) I live in Scarcroft/Shadwell

 

[Sebastian]

Gallagher make good products and the equi fence is one of them, but at around £330 for just a roll of 250 metres, the costs will pile up quickly if you're fencing a large paddock. Electric rope is much cheaper, looks good, can be tentioned and works well.

 

[Spring Feather]

It sounds a lot like Centaur fencing. Vinyl covered wire? Loads of my fields are fenced with this if that's the case. It is fantastic fencing; incredibly safe. All of the fields I have fenced in this have two strands with the carbon which can be electrified if we ever needed to but we usually fence with 5 or 6 strands so I've never needed to electrify any of those fields. It's super easy to install (we are actually distributors for Centaur and have installed tonnes of it, not only on our large farm but also on clients farms). I use the 4 and 5 inch rails for some of my fields and it's lovely but very expensive, so the vinyl wrapped high tensile wire is a fabulous compromise and something you will not regret doing.

 

[Malibu_Stacy]

Thank you all for feedback. Sebastian, we only have 5 acres so that should be just about affordable?

Equiwire sounds similar to your stuff Spring Feather. I think I'd rather shell out now and feel happy that I've bought the safest fencing I can afford (not that that would necessarily stop horses injuring themselves ridiculously on though!).

Stencilface I'm to the north west of you I think, Almscliffe area, barely two miles from beavers tack shop which is handy!

 

[Spring Feather]

...not that that would necessarily stop horses injuring themselves ridiculously on though!

I think you'll find fence injuries will result in zero. It's almost impossible for them to injure themselves on it providing it has been installed correctly and is tensioned and slackened as necessary. I've had it for about 8 or 9 years and the only injury that has ever happened here with this fencing (we have 50 horses here) was a nutty Arab scooting about like an eejit during a thunderstorm. She ran into it, was bounced off it, and her *injury* was white vinyl lines 'melted' onto her fur (friction) and a stiff shoulder for a couple of days.

 

[Dry Rot]

If you are looking for a cheaper fix, I'd suggest a single strand of high tensile 2.5mm galvanised fencing wire (£60 for 600 metres) on posts (£2.50ea) with insulators 30 metres apart set about a metre away from your stock fence. That should be more than adequate and cost pennies. That is what I have around my "foaling paddock" which used to be a grass run for my dogs (about ½ acre) and has square mesh on the outside.

About 20 years ago I was the local rep for Gallagher Electric Fencing and I fenced my entire property (30 acres) with four or five strand permanent electric fencing. I have since modified that by fixing white tape to the top wire with a cable tie every few meters. As the tape doesn't need to carry electricity, I use any old tape which is a further saving. Ponies (12 Highlands) do occasionally break a wire but I have never, ever, had it cause an injury as it is too stiff and springy to wrap around a limb.

 

[*hic*]

An even cheaper solution that we used successfully for ten years is to buy 10" stand off insulators and screw them to the posts supporting the stock fencing then use thin electric rope on them. I used one line at about a foot off the floor, another line at the top of the stock fencing - about 3'6 and a further line using short insulators on the tops of the posts at about 4'6" so that there was no temptation to put heads over, there was also a line of high tensile galvanised wire between the stock fencing and the top hot wire.

 

[Dry Rot]

An even cheaper solution that we used successfully for ten years is to buy 10" stand off insulators and screw them to the posts supporting the stock fencing then use thin electric rope on them. I used one line at about a foot off the floor, another line at the top of the stock fencing - about 3'6 and a further line using short insulators on the tops of the posts at about 4'6" so that there was no temptation to put heads over, there was also a line of high tensile galvanised wire between the stock fencing and the top hot wire.

Yes, I agree that too. Some of my old fences have a single wire on offsets as described with the extension on the top which makes the fence almost stallion proof.

The key to using 2.5mm high tensile electrified wire is to have secure strainers at each end and keep it reasonably tight. In contrast to normal stock fencing, permanent electric fencing needs to give to pressure so the wire stays in contact with the animal and has time to deliver a good shock. The traditional stock fence physically holds livestock back while the electric fence is primarily a psychological barrier.

 

[Bobbly]

My five acres if fenced with horse wire, never had any imjurie from it, keeps the dogs in and stops my mini's escaping between paddocks. I did end up using two wooden rails though, as strong as you strain it the bu**ers do like to rub their bums on it and stretch it!

 

[Malibu_Stacy]

Mananzwa, yes, I think that's the stuff the fencer meant. Thanks for all the feedback and ideas. I had thought about using offset insulators on the stock fencing where possible, but it did seem like it would be harder to then properly tension that compared to if they had their own posts?

 

[Dry Rot]

Mananzwa, yes, I think that's the stuff the fencer meant. Thanks for all the feedback and ideas. I had thought about using offset insulators on the stock fencing where possible, but it did seem like it would be harder to then properly tension that compared to if they had their own posts?

You still have to tension wire on offsets but can generally do that to the stock fence end posts (i.e. strainers), if you get what I mean. Normally, wires need to be strained in a straight line but if you make the angle from the last offsets as shallow as possible, it is still easy to get them tensioned. Let me know if you need a diagram.

 

[*hic*]

I got round the straining and some of the expense by using what might be termed electric string. That's easy to keep taut - rather than strain - and is required only as the psychological barrier dry rot talks about. If they do happen to get a leg over the nosewire it breaks relatively easily so minimising the risk of injury but it can deliver a good belt and this method not only kept my horses in but also my sheep who had discovered that they could climb the stock wire. My sheep were always rather special