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Once we had our perimeter fence set up, we needed to use some electric fencing to reinforce the fencelines we share with neighbors and to divide up some spaces within our perimeter fence. After looking into a variety of electric fence products, we settled on using several products by Zareba.
Perimeter Electric Fencing:
We needed to set up a perimeter fencing on the backside of our farm to keep our horses off of old barbed wire and woven wire fencing they coudl get injured on. Because it was going to be on the outside edge of our property, we wanted it to be both a physical and psychological fence. Many products on the market do a great job of helping contain horses, but most of them simply do not offer the security and safety needed for a perimeter fence.
The best product we found for this is Electrobraid fencing. It is a permanent electric horse fence designed especially for horses that acts as both a physical barrier and a psychological deterrent. It is highly visible to horses, strong, durable and resilient. This electric fence looks like a high quality braided yachting rope with a double helix of copper wire conductors is braided into the outer jacket of the electric fence rope. It is under tension, like a boxing ring and springs back upon impact. There are no sharp points or hard edges, noting to break or splinter. For our cribbing horse, it also means he doesn't have any fence boards to crib on and damage. Other electric fences have small diameter wires, or break with very little tension, resulting in greater likelihood of a horse breaking through the fence upon impact and becoming injured or loose.
As an added bonus, you can space posts as far as 50 feet apart, which greatly reduces the work needed to set posts, especially in our rocky terrain. It is also not significantly affected by grass growing up around it, making it a low maintenance fencing option.
Supplies:
Posts (t-posts, wooden or fiberglass)
Insulators (we used a combination of Zareba's wood post and t-post insulators)
Electrobraid fencing - multiply the length of the fence times the number of "rails" you want to install
Tension Kit - we were spanning some longer distances, so we bought two kits so we could tension partway down the fenceline and then again at the end point. I highly recommend having two kits if you are going to be installing the fence over distances, or around multiple curves or corners
Copper Split Bolts - for splicing and your end point connections
Grounding Rods - 3 eight-foot grounding rods no more than 20 feet from your fence charger
Electric Fence Charger - we went with Patriot P10 and have been very pleased with it.
Installation:
This fence was so quick and easy to install. we installed it on a combination of metal t-posts, wood posts and trees in our woods. On the trees, we screwed some small wooden boards into the trees to protect the tree and the insulator as the tree grows over time, since this fence is under a significant amount of tension. We followed the installation instructions from Electrobraid for our fence and everything was pretty straightforward for us.
Our fence has been in place for a little over a year and has so far required almost no maintenance. We walk the fence occasionally, test the voltage on the fence, and remove weeds that have grown up around the fence a couple of times a year.
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