Sectioning off paddock

[Iwantgoats]

I have a question about sectioning off my paddock. It is very large and I have a horse coming. I don't want it to eat all the grass all at once and turn it into a wasteland. How does everyone section off their pasture?? What do you use?

 

[patandchickens]

Like most people I use electric and step-in posts... in fact I am not sure I have ever seen any other kind of (safe) temporary subfencing used for horses. Some people use electric tape, some use polywire or wire, some use electric rope; but pretty much everyone uses electric of some sort, on temporary posts of some sort. (Unless you want to install permanent cross-fencing, of course)

Personally I prefer 2-3 strands of 1/2" tape (although 1 1/2" tape is ok too if you have enough posts and happen to want to spend the extra money or have really not-paying-attention horses), because it is so much more visible than the other options. But as long as you know your particular horses' personalities and habits, and preferably use something no stronger than necessary so that if a horse doesn't see it and gets tangled he won't get too badly hurt, other options can certainly work. Unwise to try to use electric-fence material but *not* charge it -- that is how vet bills happen.

For posts, the plastic step-ins are handy and versatile and quick to use, although rather short and a smidge more expensive. Fiberglass posts will quickly start to degrade and give you fiberglas splinters *real bad* unless you handle them only with gloves, and IMO are a bit more of a nuisance to work with b/c you have to put insulators on them, and I have known horses to skewer themselves on 'em, but they are not an unreasonable option. Metal step-in posts are not a great plan around horses IMHO, too many ways to end up with vet bills there and you aren't really saving *much* money.

Even with rotational grazing, for truly optimum pasture growth you still have to mow (at least in spots) after you move the horse on to the next paddock. You can skip it, but lose a significant part of the value of rotational grazing that way.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[michickenwrangler]

I have a portable corral for camping that is basically what Pat described. White step-in posts with yellow tape fencing. I also have it hooked up to a battery operated garden charger although while I had it hooked up, I didn't turn on the electric last time I camped with my horse. She's been zapped a few times and is wary of the fence.

Steel panels would also be nice. The trainer at the stable I board at uses them for temporary and rotational grazing. But they will be a lot more expensive and heavy but don't need the electric.

 

[Bossroo]

The electric fening will work only if there is enough soil moisture to complete the circuit from the horse standing on the dirt and when it touches the well grounded electrified fence wire. When I first baught my 20 acre farm in the high desert of the Central Calif. Valley, I cross renced it with electric fencing during the winter and it worked great, however after a summer/ fall's worth of soil drying out without any rain, it became useless. I could hold onto the wire with my hand and NOT get zapped. Also, there is no way in h * ll that a plastic or fiberglass step on post could be driven into the rock hard soils that we have here for most of the year. Only steel "T" posts driven into the gound with fencepost driver or wooden posts into a dug out posthole.

 

[patandchickens]

The electric fening will work only if there is enough soil moisture to complete the circuit from the horse standing on the dirt and when it touches the well grounded electrified fence wire.

You can use an electric fence even on bare rock or bone-dry sand, if you can rig a way to set up posts for it. All you have to do is run a pos-neutral fence instead of the conventional pos-ground fence. You run your wires in pairs, the two wires of a pair being separated by 3-4" or so if there are not very many of them as in a horse-paddock crossfence. (In a fence that will have lotsa wires, you just use conventional spacing and alternate how each one is hooked up) One of the wires in a pair you connect to the 'fence' terminal of the charger; the other wire you connect directly to the 'ground' terminal of the charger.

Then what zaps the animal is touching those two wires *at the same time* (the reason they shouldn't be egregiously far apart). He is guaranteed a good stiff zap even if he is levitating in midair

Also useful for areas with deep snow or frozen ground for much of the year, ask me how I know <g>

Pat

 

[goodhors]

Something we see happen with electric fences in hot summer is grounding dries out. So if someone is complaining their fencer is not working to keep the fence hot, you tell them to "water the ground rods". Sounds silly, but just by emptying the water buckets on the ground rods daily or every other day, the ground rods and dirt around them WORK better! Damp soil keeps things working as they should be, fence BITES the animals as it needs to for good containment.

A second really COMMON problem is that the ground rod clamp holding wire to 8ft ground rods gets a corroded screw contact. With mixed metal of copper clamp, galvanized ground rods, they can build up corrosion, so grounding is not happening after a while. Clamp needs replacing, so there is good contact between clamp with wire and ground rod to ground properly.

When you do mow right after taking animals off the section, mow high, 5 inches, no shorter. Height is to keep enough leaf protection for the grass roots. Too short and leaves can't feed the roots, leaves can't protect roots from the hot sun and heavy rain erodes dirt cover. Grazing plants actually spread better by roots than seed they grow. Gives you a tougher root system, deep and thick, that survives weather and hoof travel.

So the best advice in having good grazing, is to mow high and mow often. I mow when grass gets up to about 8 inches. I never let grass go to seed, because the plants will then go dormant. Plant's job is done for the summer, reproduced by setting and drying seeds, so it shuts down. Then you REALLY have nothing to graze!