Once my new mare is out of quarantine I'm going to have to transition her from solid wood with no climb fencing situation to a smooth wire and hotwire combo. Mare is not the most fence savvy horse in the world, and I want to do everything I can to make the transition smooth. Any ideas for how I can ease the transistion. Completely redoing the fence is not in the cards, but I can make minor modifications. It's three strand smooth wire with a combination of wooden posts and T-posts. I will be getting hotwire and capping all the currently uncapped T-posts.
I do have access to a small paddock that is smooth wire on the bottom and centuar fencing on the top. I was thinking of using that for a week or so during the transition. It's close enough to the paddock I will ultimately be using to help her adjust to the sights and sounds of the area. I still feel like I need something to make the second fence seem more solid.
Do not use electric wire, use white electric tape, it is much more visable. You can attach electric tape to electric wire to make it hot. There are clamps that will let you fasten them to each other. There are insulators for electric tape that can be nailed onto the wood posts and insulators that will clip onto the T posts.
Or you can do what a friend did at her farm. The farm had existing high tensil wire fencing. After a kicking horse got a bad laceration from the wire fence (non-electric) she decided to add electric tape inside of the fence. The old fnence had a lot of brush and small trees growing up thru sections of it and would have been very hard to clean out. She decided to put up a 2-strand fence just 18-24 inches inside the existing fence, using easy to install step-in posts. At corners of the fields she attached the step-in posts to the braced corner posts of the wire fence to keep the posts erect and the tape taunt. This worked for her, not pretty but horses have stayed away from the fence lines since it was modified.
Another strand of white electric tape on the inside of the fence, held off about 8" or so would really teach her to respect the fence. Had to do that once on a woven wire fence because the pony was rubbing her butt and making huge bowed-out sections. A strand of hot tape fixed that problem rather quickly.
If yards of fencing are not in the budget, you can tie flags to every strand of wire to make it more visible. You don't need to buy flags, just use strips of old bedsheets about 12-18" long. The movement lets the horses know that something's there. It also keeps deer from tearing down the top wires when they jump the fence.
Also, keep the fence electrified! Some people like to save electricity and don't electrify their fence 24/7, but if you think the horse might not respect the fence, electrify it. No escape-bound critter likes being zapped!
With your setup, I'd add a strip of hot tape across the top and tie flags to the rest of the strands.
I have enough tape left over from running a bit of extra hot tape around my gelding's paddock to run some twice around the new paddock. I'll look into the step-in posts. I think there's a deal on them at Lowe's.
Deer aren't an issue, pigs might be. There is no electricity on most of the ranch so solar is required. Luckily there is plenty of sunshine. The solar box for this paddock is already in place, it will share with another small paddock.
I'm just worried that she'll run straight through the wire. We had another horse arrive last week who has never been on wire and he's gone through the fence already. Thankfully he wasn't injured. He was in a much larger paddock, about 1.5 acres. My girl will be on half an acre. Here's hoping the step-in posts ae enough.
Improving a wire fence
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