Hi
Does anyone have any suggestions how I can stop our pony running through the electric fencing, it is a behaviour she has learnt after being at a yard where the fencing was rubbish but we have moved yards last October and the fencing is good but they do have spring gates between paddocks and she runs under these but is breaking the fencing in the progress she has done it twice recently, the first time I can understand because the weather was horrible and I was held up so she was left out on her own but now she has done it again when out with other ponies and I think she just decided there was more grass in next paddock so went through.
Understandably the yard owner is getting annoyed with this and I can see her asking us to move our pony but this is not really an option for us as we live in a very small village and no other suitable yards near by
Thanks in advance
Wendy
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Horse Behavior and Training
No respect for fencing
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Hi Wendy. I have had trouble with spring gates. When it's hot & there are lots of flies then swishing tails get caught up, the pony gets zapped, takes off taking the gate with them. Fab, no gate & panicking pony with 'snake' chasing it - chaos! I found two solutions. Firstly, ditch the spring gate & use the handle with 6 mm electric rope instead. You can buy the handles separately so you can put more strands across. The other option was to put something across below the spring gate. There are many rolls of plastic mess used in gardens which are useful for this. The black stuff, for stopping growth under chipping, for instance. You just need an electric gate handle top & bottom to allow it to open when needed. It's completely user friendly & ponies perceive it to be solid & stop trying to escape. Hope this helps. Cheers, Jo.
Thanks jo
But I have another chat with yard owner and Millie our pony is going through mains electric fencing we moved her to another paddock with no spring gates and she still went through we now have 6 weeks to find a solution or I have to move her
Hi. Is this a single strand of fence or more? My mare uses her teeth to pull up plastic fence posts rendering any electric fence useless. She pulls up 3 or 4 posts & then pops over the shorting mess on the floor! I use wooden stakes which cured that problem. A quarter of the size of a normal square fence post, these stakes are inexpensive, re-useable & at 4 feet high once a foot in the ground, plenty high enough. If Millie is simply pushing under a single strand then more strands should be added & perhaps more posts if these are very widely spaced. If wooden posts already used then plastic ones in between could be a simple answer. Does Millie always escape towards the stables? If so, only the fence on that side needs reinforcement. Unfortunately, the trend is to rely on electric fencing as it is so cheap & easy to set up in comparison with permanent fencing & hedging. Of course, in the long term the running costs are high & as in this case, it's not always suitable. Plastic posts are cheap & so is electric rope, the very thin stuff not the 6mm. Hope this info helps, Jo
Hi, same as Jo really.
my 2 used to be a real pain with the short posts, one would lean over the top & push it down & the other one would snap the plastic posts off with her teeth like matchsticks!
They both had laminitis so a serious problem!
I had to get the tall horse posts & put 4 strands of tape on them, the lowest strand i used the cheap polywire & put it on the highest lug i was using for that strand, then straight down that post to the bottom lug, then up at an angle to the next post & down to the bottom again so she got a shock to her mouth when she tried to snap them off,might not sound too nice BUT, their lives were at stake & she soon learned not to do it!!!
I can only suggest more strands of rope as Jo suggested as it's stronger & you definitely need to ditch the spring gate, you need more strands across the gateway too.
I can understand the yard owners point of view as well as yours but elec fence should not be used as the only boundary fence.
As it's already run off the mains, you can't up the power.
Best of luck, let us know how you get on.