A well-maintained round pen can help reduce the risk of leg strains and other injuries. Photo © EQUUS

You may use your round pen only for short, supervised training sessions, but regular wear and tear can still take a toll on it. To make sure your round pen is safe and secure for your horse, inspect its footing and fencing periodically.

Working a horse in a regular track around the perimeter of the pen is going to create ruts over time. Dragging the surface regularly, as you would in a riding ring, will help maintain safe, level footing that protects your horse’s legs from strains and injury. If your horse slips frequently despite dragging, you might need to consider either installing or replenishing a footing material, such as sand or wood chips, to give him better traction.

Even if you intend to keep your horse under your control while working in the pen, the fence needs to be sturdy enough to withstand spooks and crashes. Regularly check for and repair loose posts or panels, and close off gaps that could entrap the leg of a rolling or bucking horse. Also look for and fix splinters or other protrusions that could cause lacerations.

This article first appeared in EQUUS issue #429.

While investigating a 5,600-year-old village site in Kazakhstan, archaeologists determined that its Copper Age inhabitants were among the first cultures to tame horses. The evidence? The buried remnants of corral posts. Clearly, fences have been crucial to our shared relationship all along.

Unlike ancient horsemen who were limited to sticks and stones to enclose their horses, we benefit from a vast variety of traditional and modern materials from which to choose. Unfortunately, despite over 5,000 years of development, there’s still no ideal fence for every horsekeeping purpose. Each fence choice involves balancing safety concerns with aesthetics, cost, and upkeep.

Chances are you’ll employ a variety of materials and fence designs on your property for paddocks, arenas, and pasture fences—or even mix fence materials for a single enclosure. Choosing carefully will help maximize the safety, value, appeal, and utility of your fences. Before looking at the broad range of choices, let’s discuss safe fencing construction.

Safety
America’s West was tamed by blazing guns and barbed wire. Both remain murderous when used improperly. While barbed wire is relatively safe for huge pastures holding thick-skinned, placid cattle, the use of barbed wire for horse properties has caused untold tragedies. If you have any on your horse acreage, your first fencing priority is to remove it.

Building codes may ultimately determine fencing requirements for your land, but some general rules of thumb apply nearly everywhere. Field fences should be 54 to 60 inches above ground level. Err on the side of caution and go with a 5-feet minimum height where fences abut highways or anywhere that an escaped horse can flee your premises. Six feet is the safe minimum height for stall runs and paddocks.

At bottom, an opening of 8 to 12 inches will keep feet and legs from getting trapped, and also prevent foals from rolling under the fence. Fence openings should be either large enough that a hoof, leg, or even the head can’t become trapped, or very small (no more than 3 inches by 3 inches) to prevent a hoof from penetrating. To maintain tension, most wire fences, both fabric and high-tensile smooth wire, require triangular-shaped bracing at the corners and at intervals of about 1/8 mile. The acute angles formed by brace wires represent entrapment hazards if the horse can reach them; good design (such as boards used in corners to block access) can prevent injury, even death.

Visibility, especially with wire fencing, is too often overlooked. While a white plank fence of wood or PVC is easily seen by horses, wires can be almost invisible when a horse panics and runs—the time when the worth of a fence is truly tested. Improve visibility to wire fences by adding a top rail of wood; PVC; or durable white vinyl fence ribbon, either standard or electrified. This addition not only makes a wire fence more visible, it also deters horses from reaching over the fence to graze.

Regardless of fence material and design, one of your goals should be to present a smooth side to the horses. Do-it-yourselfers occasionally make the mistake of mounting boards on the outside of fence posts, which makes them easy for horses to knock loose. Further, the exposed posts can injure a horse that runs down the fence line. With cross-pasture fencing, you may not be able to avoid this exposure; in such cases, using an electric fence wire to create a psychological as well as a physical barrier offers a safe solution.

Corners also present problems, especially if you plan to pasture horses that don’t get along well. Any corner can create an entrapment situation where one horse is bullied. The problem is especially bad when the corner angle is acute (90 degrees or less). Some solutions include corners that curve. This requires placing wire fence barriers on the outside of the posts, but this is less of a problem in corners than it is along straight runs. Another solution is to affix planks across corners to block access.

Wood posts, field fence, a highly visible electric tape, and a twisted smooth-wire top line makes this an exceptionally safe fence.

Posts
The strength and integrity of a fence come from good fence posts, properly installed. Wire fences require tension, which means that corner assemblies and gate assemblies need to be braced against the pulling forces. Generally, when using wood posts, it’s best to use concrete to set corner assemblies and gate posts. Metal T-posts benefit from having sturdy wood corner and gate assemblies as well. These are an absolute requirement for high-tensile wire.

Wood is traditional and commonly used for fence posts. Whether you’re making a plank fence or just using wood posts, local availability and custom may determine your choices in woods. For instance, while hardwood fence materials tend to be readily available in the East, Southeast, and parts of the Midwest, softwoods predominate in the West. To deter decomposition, common softwoods that are resistant to rot and insect infestation include cedar, redwood, and cypress. Unfortunately, these woods are very expensive.

For this reason, horsemen often choose pressure-treated lumber (usually pinewood or fir); such lumber costs 1/3 to 1/5 of the above-mentioned varieties. With pressure treated lumber (or “PTL”), the manufacturer impregnates the wood with chemicals that resist rot, fungi, and insects. Look for treated lumber posts that are certified for in-ground use. Paint won’t bond to the material, so PTL fences are invariably natural.

Your horses are hard enough on your fences and gates as they chew, kick, and lean, but you may be damaging them, too. Here are several guidelines for protecting the structures against human wear and tear.

• Build a stile—a permanent set of steps—wherever you commonly climb over a fence. Blueprints for many types are available on the Internet. You can also create a pass through at a popular crossing site to allow people—but not horses—to easily enter a field.
• If you must climb you fence, do so only near a post, where you’re less likely to yank a board loose. Before hoisting yourself up, sharply pull on the board to make sure it’s secure and will hold your weight.
• Prevent gates from sagging on their hinges and dragging across the ground by resting them on a block of wood or even a large rock whenever they’re opened or closed for an extended time. The support should be tall enough that you have to lift the gate up slightly to rest it in place.
• Use a rock or forked stick to prop open a gate and keep it from swinging and banging.
• Place reflectors anywhere there is a risk of a vehicle colliding with a fence, gate, or post in low light. Also use them to mark the fence at your farm’s entryway, particularly if driving onto your property requires a tight turn from the road.

You probably need no lessons on how to cut your everyday horse-care costs. As mandatory enrollees in The School of Struggling Economy, that's something we've all had to learn in the last few years. Many of us even have become A students in the subjects of scrimping, saving, and getting by. We could write term papers about buying bulk, giving shots on our own, and making old things last.

But there's one thing guaranteed to flunk just about anyone's carefully studied horsekeeping budget, and that's the unexpected big vet bill for a horse that's injured or ill. A single emergency farm call can run into hundreds, and ongoing crisis-care costs can come to resemble student loans-large, with lots of zeroes, and daunting, in terms of what it'll take to pay them off.

Once your horse incurs a need for emergency treatment, there’s not a lot you can do to control its expense. But there’s plenty you can do in the name of vet-bill prevention, which is where the real savings lie. Money you don’t have to spend—on farm calls, x-rays, suturing, bandaging, medications, and more—is money you get to keep and use for something else. And let’s face it: The pain of a large vet bill is an even bigger ouch when you look back and realize you could have avoided the situation that brought it on.

This makes it well worth your while to enact simple, preventive changes to your everyday horse care and management routines. Here are 21 flashcard ways to go about it.

It Only Takes One Bad Step
In many cases, equine accident prevention begins from the ground up—literally. To proactively keep big vet bills at bay, pay attention to the surface areas your horses find themselves on.

1. Never be nice to ice. Untreated icy spots—around water troughs, atop concrete walkways, or any other surfaces your horses tread—can bring on a serious vet bill (perhaps even a fatal fracture) after a horse’s feet go out from under him and he crashes hard to the ground. Use a non-toxic ice-melting product where needed. Never lead a horse, especially one that’s shod, over an icy surface. If you must do so—in a winter emergency, let’s say—boost traction with sand or gravel.

2. Pick the poopsicles. Frozen manure balls, left uncleaned from corrals and pens, are just like egg-sized rocks. If your horse strides down onto just one of them, his sole can be bruised so badly that it abscesses, and that’d mean a call to your vet and farrier alike. Don’t leave those iceballs lying around.

3. When in doubt, don't turn out. A recent study showed more injuries to horses during turnout time than when under saddle. If your turnout area’s footing is frozen solid, bogged with mud, or slick from recent rain or snow, the safest way to manage his risk and yours is to keep your horse in until conditions improve.

4. Take good care of your training ground. Sure, it takes time to keep your arena or other training ground in good condition, but which would you rather do—work the arena, or pay the bills to treat a splint, bowed tendon, or pulled ligament?

5. Protect the horse, not the shelf. Protective boots and wraps don’t do a thing for your horse if you don’t bother to put them on. And remember: When you do use them, for riding, turn-outs, and hauling, you’re protecting your wallet as well as the horse.

Enclosure Patrol
Stalls, corrals, paddocks, and pastures—all are erected as necessary means of keeping horses safely behind a barrier. Yet all are capable of bringing on an injury if neglected or poorly made, and virtually all need maintenance at some point.

6. Designate a barn hammer. A single protruding nail or screw end, left for a horse to brush against, can slice his flesh open like a box cutter. Instead of meaning to fix a problem (whenever you get around to locating a hammer missing in action), take care of it right away with the hammer you keep at hand for that purpose. Then put it back in its designated place.

7. Walk the line. Horses are hard on manmade fixtures, and can set up their own accident traps if you’re not looking. Make it a habit to inspect every fence line or other enclosure, including stall walls, on a regular basis. Take your toolbelt with you.

8. Shake hands with the fence posts. Your fencing’s only as good as the integrity of the posts, and to avoid vet bills, you want to find and fix the small problems before they add up to a full-on fencing failure that lets your horses escape to mayhem and injury. As you walk each fence line, grab and try to tug each post top back and forth. If you can move it, a horse can, too, and that’s not good. Reset, retamp, or replace, and do it right away.

9. Leave no metal T-post uncapped. The bare-metal top of a T-post can spear a horse if he runs into it or happens to rear and come down on top of it. Head gory wounds off at the pass by using protective vinyl T-post caps, readily available online or at your nearest farm/ranch store.

10. Eliminate leg traps. Anything with a four-inch opening is capable of ensnaring a horse if he puts a foot through it and can’t get it back out. Common culprits include certain types of woven or welded fencing designed for sheep or cattle; gaps beneath stall doors that trap a leg after a horse lies down; and the V-shaped, fetlock-snagging spaces formed when some styles of portable metal fencing panels are pinned together. If you can’t make something safer, replace it. (Visit panelcaps.net to see photos of panel-fencing dangers, and a product designed to eliminate them.)

11. Check every gate fastener, every time. A gate’s fastener is to a fence’s security as a cinch strap is to security of a saddle—as soon as it breaks or is left undone, a wreck is sure to happen. (Picture your escaped horse running loose down a highway.) You’ve been taught to double-check your cinch before every ride. Now, teach yourself to double-check the fastener on any gate, stall, or trailer door, before you walk away.

Colic: Stand Guard
After old age, colic is the leading cause of death in horses over 30 days of age, and treating it is expensive. Treatment of a non-surgical colic can run into hundreds, and according to the American Association of Equine Practitioners, the cost of colic surgery now exceeds $4,000 in most cases. The good news: You can prevent many colics with savvy management.

12. Beware known risks. AAEP names the following as known colic risk factors: stall confinement with gastric ulceration, ileal compaction from coastal Bermuda hay, and cribbing with recurrent colic and strangulation of the small intestine. So it follows that the more you can do to manage away from these risks, the less colic cost you’re likely to incur.

13. Provide plenty of clean, convenient water. Your horse's greatest need for water is right after he eats, and ready access to fresh drinking water is key to prevention of colic caused by feed impaction. Inspect and top off each horse’s water supply at each daily feeding time. If you rely on a large tank or natural water source, such as a pond, make sure the water hasn’t frozen, gone bad, or run out.

14. Restock feedstuffs before running out. The equine digestive system doesn’t take kindly to abrupt feeding changes of any kind. If you feed a special grain mix, always reorder far enough ahead to keep the supply steady. Likewise, bring a new hay supply in early enough that you can make a gradual changeover from the hay you’re feeding now.

15. Get a barometer (and be a weather watching in general). Though science has yet to explain why, vets and owners alike have noted that colic incidence tends to go up with big swings in barometric pressure—such as might occur with the onset of a storm. Keep a close eye on your horses whenever a steep barometric climb or plunge takes place, so you can nip any suspected colic in the bud.

16. Get your vet involved early in a suspected colic. Contradictory as it may seem, the sooner you get your vet involved in helping you with a colic case, the better your horse’s chances of survival and the more money you could save. It’s always better to spend a little at the start than a lot after it’s too late, and the longer your horse goes without expert treatment, the worse his colic is likely to get.

Prevent Feed Wrecks
Is it possible to have a feeding accident? Absolutely—just ask the owner of the horse that broke into the grain bin and gorged himself, or the person who lost a horse to an episode of choke, even after spending over $1,000 on emergency vet care.

17. Horse-proof the grain supply. Keep your grain supply behind a closed door or in a bin you can lock and that a horse can’t tip over. (This rules out the idea of storing your grain in an aisleway garbage can.)

18. Consider soaking pelleted feeds before feeding. If your horse is one that bolts his feed, or if he’s dentally challenged due to old age, feeding him dry pellets is risky. Should he gulp a mouthful without chewing it well, the dry mass could lodge in his esophagus and cause choke—always a veterinary emergency.

19. Keep herd dynamics in mind. Any time you feed horses in a group, some kind of pecking-order squabbling is sure to take place. You can do much to reduce costly kick injuries by keeping feed piles well spread out, with no tight corners where a low-ranked horse can’t get away from an aggressor.

20. Don't overfeed anything. Beyond the matter of letting your horse get too fat, overfeeding can push him into the vet-bill danger zone in lots of ways. Give too much high-energy sweet feed, for example, and he can hurt himself during an over-exuberant turnout. Feed certain nutrients in excess, and you can find yourself fighting a case of orthopedic disease.

21. Be careful with grass. As spring approaches and grass resumes growth, limit your horse’s initial access to no more than 10 to 15 minutes of grazing a day. The high volume of sugars in new grass can trigger a metabolic emergency, such as acute-onset laminitis, and some horses are more prone to it than others. Save by playing it safe.

February isn’t the most inviting month for walking your bleak, frozen pastures, but if winter brought snow, ice or high winds to your area, now’s the time to check your pasture fences and ensure your perimeter is secure. And although it may be tempting to saddle up for this task, it’s best to walk the fence line instead---you’ll be better able to spot needed repairs. Here are some things to look for:

• broken or weakened fence boards
• slack smooth steel wire fencing in need of tightening or refastening
• loose or projecting nails
• wobbly posts or support braces
• sagging gates
• frayed, broken or inoperable electric fences. Use a fence tester to make sure they’re “hot.”
• downed tree limbs, especially from toxic red maple or cherry trees, and other hazardous materials.

If the fence is structurally sound or you have an alternate pasture for your horses, you may be able to put off addressing any problems you find until the weather improves. But assessing the damage and making your “to do” list now is an important first step to a permanent fix.

Bailey

One of the boarders called to ask me to help. I hurried back to the barn to find my beloved horse and pony galloping full-bore down an ice-covered road. They were being cautiously pursued by several cars and trucks, driven by people who were trying to keep them close to home and away from more heavily traveled roads. They backed off as I drove up behind my horses.

I rolled down the window, stuck my head out and called out their names as though they were safely in the pasture. Their ears flicked back to me and their speed slowed to a fast canter. I kept talking to them as they ran back toward the farm. To my relief, they headed through the yard and toward an open gate and empty pasture. I followed through about two inches of snow and blocked the gate, figuring I'd deal with getting unstuck later. All that mattered was keeping them secured behind that fence.

I was able to easily catch them, but had to spend the next few hours cooling and drying out their heavy coats, which were soaked with sweat. Unfortunately, I hadn't been able to grab weather-appropriate clothing, and I was quite cold, but that's what happens when you have Houdini horses!

June Bug

2. Then there was the night in March 2005 (again in Baraboo, Wis.): I got to the barn to feed and discovered Bailey, June Bug and my other Morab, 4-year-old Marcus, had smashed through a section of their paddock fence. It was snowing heavily and there were no tracks, so I assumed that they'd stayed in the paddock. That wasn't the case. The next day, the barn owner found tracks circling her house. Either some good Samaritan caught my horses and put them back in the paddock or they jumped the fence and put themselves back. No one ever stepped forward so I could thank them. That barn was only a couple of miles from an interstate and another heavily traveled highway. Dark horses in a snowstorm could have been disastrous!

3. Near Leesburg, Va.: Apparently, my normally sedate gelding had fallen in love with a cute little paint mare. On a recent Saturday morning, the owner of the barn where I board was standing in her house, enjoying her first cup of coffee, when she noticed the geldings and mares all crowded along the shared fenceline. She couldn't see clearly, but it appeared that Bailey was trying to mount DeeDee through the fence--the charged electric fence. Somebody got zapped and the fence went down. The mares ran into the geldings' pasture, taking out two fence posts and several sections of tape.

Fortunately, they were all secured behind the exterior fencing, so our barn owner opted to leave them all together until her husband returned from town. It didn't take much to sort them out and reset the fence posts.

Bailey is most definitely a gelding--I assisted with the process--although he was a stallion for six months before being gelded. I hope the fence taught him a lesson about spring fever and cute little paint mares!
Joelle Schultz
Leesburg, Va.

We appreciate the traditional look of wood-board horse fences as much as the next person. They provide a solid barrier that most horses won't challenge. Wood horse fences, however, cost plenty at the outset and require expensive maintenance for their lifetimes. That's why mesh and vinyl horse fencing are becoming such popular choices. Both require far less care and, while costlier at the outset than budget fencing, are often cheaper over the long run.

Wood
If properly cared for, wood fence has a life expectancy of about 25 years. The planks used for horse fencing are typically oak, poplar, or pine. Oak has a rustic look and can be tough to come by. But it's a hard, durable wood, and horses don't always like its taste. Green oak may warp, though, so be sure it's fully cured.

Pine boards, which are softer and cheaper than oak, need to be treated with chemicals to be hard enough for horse fencing, but when treatment starts to wear off, equine beavers will hit tasty pine hard. Like pine, poplar is a softer and less expensive wood. Wood fences are often painted with paint or a preservative, which are fairly messy, time-consuming processes.

If you're considering a wood three- or four-board fence, your best bet is to consult your area Yellow Pages for local fence companies.

PVC and Vinyl Flexboard
PVC (polyvinyl chloride) planking looks like wood-from a distance. You can tell the difference once you're close up, although the industry is working hard to have its products resemble wood. But the difference in maintenance and lifetime is huge-vinyl will pretty much last forever. You won't need to repaint as you would with wood, although vinyl does need to be cleaned, usually with a bleach solution, as it's prone to gathering dirt and gray mildew, especially in muggy climates.

We would only buy PVC fencing with a UV inhibitor, or protectant, which at this point are pretty standard. Without a protectant, vinyl will get brittle and worn.

Recent trends for PVC fencing include more colors, often chosen to match a barn or other outbuildings, and textured materials, which look even more like wood.

Be sure your vinyl is for horses. Hollow-plank PVC may be all right for the fencing around the house, but to keep horses in, it needs an internal structure, called ribs. We would skip the polymer-coated wood and just go straight for the PVC itself.

Flexible vinyl looks less like wood fencing than vinyl planking, but it's even cheaper. The vinyl bands stretch between posts like planks. We like how flex boards are electrifiable, which adds an element of security.

A vinyl plank board will run approximage $5 to $6 per foot, which means $15 to $18 a foot for a three-board fence. You then need to add on costs of posts and installation.

Flex-board fencing at four- to five-inch widths is a little less expensive, ranging from $2 to $4.50 per foot. If you can get away with a thinner rail, your cost may be as low as 44¢ per foot, however, you need to factor in visibility and the psychological element of a true barrier to the horses you're going to keep enclosed in it.

]]> http://www.equisearch.com/farm_ranch/fencing/woven-wire-horse-fences-suit-most-needs/feed/ 1 http://www.equisearch.com/farm_ranch/fencing/tape-your-horses-economy-fencing/ http://www.equisearch.com/farm_ranch/fencing/tape-your-horses-economy-fencing/#comments Sat, 01 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000 Heidi Nyland http://www.myhorse.com/tape-your-horses-economy-fencing.html

Buy a few acres and a fence, and you've got a place to keep your horses. Sort of. Fencing, unlike many aspects of horsekeeping, doesn't have to cost a fortune to be effective for most situations. (We'll look at premium fencing in a future issue.) What fencing does have to do, though, is provide your horses with visible or psychological containment.

We all know barbed wire is unsuitable for horses, but it's worth repeating. Cattle-mesh fence doesn't work well for horses either, since a horse can easily get hung up in the wire four-inch squares (other mesh fences work well, but they're costly and therefore in our premium-fence article). The same not-for-horses warning goes for plain high-tensile wire, which can cut a horse, even if it's electrified. We'd avoid using these fences.

Safe economy horse fencing today means braids, ropes and tapes made of poly material. These materials are flexible enough that a running horse probably won't be cut or entangled in it but strong enough to keep the horses in place. And, properly installed, they can be highly visible.

You'll want to run a minimum of three to four strands of rope or tape for most situations, especially if you're trying to get a minimal height of four feet. Any fewer and you risk your horse trying to go under or over the fence. Plus, the thinner the width of tape or rope you choose, the more strands of it you're going to have to use. So just forget about saving tons of money using a thinner (read less visible) product.

Fence dealers claim that their products are strong enough to contain reasonably calm horses. True enough. However, if you choose to use a tape or braid fence, consider including at least one strand of electric wire (not our favorite choice, but for safety's sake this may work as the topmost strand) or electrified tape/rope/encased wire. This is especially important if you're confining the horses to small areas. The smaller the area and the more active the horses turned out in that area, the more likely that fence is going to be tested. Fencing is no place to take chances. The rule of thumb is: The smaller your field, the more important the strength and visibility of your fence.

Visibility
Fencing needs to make horses believe that they are enclosed. Contrast against the environment is more important than the actual color choice, which is why we like our braid, rope or tape to be white or a blend with white in it. If you live in an area often coated with snow, consider alternating strands of dark-some dealers offer brown and green-and white tape.

The width of the product is extremely important. Thinner tape-sometimes as thin as half an inch-is not as visible as those that reach up to 1 ½", although it tends to be cheaper. If you must save a few pennies, alternate strands of thick and thin tape.

Any tape, rope, or braid fence you purchase should be UV-resistant. The sun wears poly materials down. If you live in a very windy area, you may want to use braid or rope instead of tape, which can sag if it's pummeled by wind. Deep, drifting snow will test whatever fence you have installed.

]]> http://www.equisearch.com/farm_ranch/fencing/tape-your-horses-economy-fencing/feed/ 0 http://www.equisearch.com/farm_ranch/fencing/ground-electrical-fence-properly-horse-pastures-paddocks-and-arenas/ http://www.equisearch.com/farm_ranch/fencing/ground-electrical-fence-properly-horse-pastures-paddocks-and-arenas/#comments Sat, 01 Sep 2007 01:00:00 +0000 Heidi Nyland http://www.myhorse.com/ground-electrical-fence-properly-horse-pastures-paddocks-and-arenas.html

Poor electric fence grounding is the leading cause of electric fence failure in horse paddocks, horse fields, and horse arenas, which can lead to horses escaping from their electric fence enclosures and endangering people, property and themselves. While your top priority should be to build safe, horse-proof fences, an electric fence current offers an extra measure of security and will dissuade horses from putting pressure on their boundaries. But it won't help if the electric fence current is too weak or keeps going down.

When you "ground" a fence, you're completing the electrical circuit. When your horse (or you, or your dogs or anyone else) touches the fence, he gets zapped, because he, in effect, becomes the conduit for taking the current to ground. Many horses seem keenly aware when an electric fence is turned on and when it is not. The electricity pulsing through the wire is what keeps many horses from testing the fence, while an unpleasant shock serves as a potent reminder to stay off the fence if they get too close.

Although it is possible to complete the circuit by attaching a grounding wire to a water or utility line, the most trustworthy and safe fence is grounded using at least three 8-foot-long grounding rods. In areas of rocky soil, another option is to drive several shorter rods into the ground. For example, you can use six 3-foot-long rods or four 4-foot-long rods. The more conductive the metal utilized, the better the ground for the fence will be, and the better the charge.

Grounding a fence correctly is a pretty easy project, but if you run into trouble, contact your fence manufacturer.

1. Choose a location for your fence charger close to an electrical outlet (or invest in a solar unit). Make sure the charger is out of the reach of your horses. You'll want to drive the grounding rods near the charger, but out of the way of any path of travel.

2. Caution! Before you drive the grounding rods into the earth, make sure you're clear of any utility lines. Just as if you were digging, it's best to have all lines located by a professional service. Once you've located a safe place, use the t-post driver to ram each grounding rod deep into the soil. Space the rods about a foot apart. Leave several inches of the rod above ground. If you hit a rock, find a new location, or try driving the post into the ground at an angle. In areas with extremely rocky soil, you may have to opt for several shorter grounding rods to complete your project.

3. Once the rods are most of the way in the ground, slip a rod clamp on top of each one.

4. Use the clamps to connect the grounding wire to each rod, and using a wrench, clamp each one in place. The rods will be daisy-chained together, using the same wire. If you're using an insulated wire, you'll need wire cutters to remove sections of the plastic insulation, so the grounding rods and wire make a complete connection.

5. Now that the rods are clamped and wired together, finish pounding them into the ground. It is okay to bury the rods so none of the rod or wire is exposed to cause a tripping hazard.

6. Making sure the charger is unplugged, connect the ground wire to the charger where specified on the unit.

7. Plug the charger back in. You can use a fence tester to check the fence. With the fence properly grounded, you've now put the "hot" in hotwire. With proper fence maintenance, you're horses are more likely to stay safely in their paddocks.

For information on electrical fence supplies, check out: www.electric-fence.com

Safe, reliable confinement is the foundation of effective horse management. Loose horses can severely injure themselves, overeat to the point of laminitis and colic, wander out into traffic or simply disappear forever. A lot of horses are set loose during one-time lapses when caretakers forget to close a gate or latch a door. Vigilant double checks of barriers and ingrained gate/door-latching habits would prevent most of these unplanned outings.

But every once in a while a horse comes along who learns to fiddle or shove or leap his way out of confinement, and the game is on. Many of these crafty escapees then go on to free other horses to join in the adventures. The slyest of these escape artists seem to time their antics for periods when their caretakers are not around.

Given the gravity of the consequences, repeated escapes are behavior that has to be met head-on. At the same time you're dealing with the perpetrator and his motives, you need to implement heightened safety measures to render any succeeding breakouts relatively harmless.

Discover the Motives
My own chestnut mare, Fire, began escaping immediately following a flooding incident at the barn. After I rode her that evening, I had no choice but to put her back in her soggy stall. I left her with plenty of hay, her evening grain and a mental apology for having to bed her down in such conditions.

When my husband and I went to tend to the horses the next morning, Fire's stall door was standing open, and she was watching for us in the next aisle. Sometime during the night, she had escaped and opened the goats' stall door, liberating them to roam with her. Thanks to the facility's existing horse-proofing, no harm came of the mare's outing, but it was a behavior we didn't want to encourage. Fire had never attempted to escape prior to the flooding and now seemed intent on leaving that stall whenever she could. The circumstantial link suggested that we try her in a different setting. We made arrangements to move her to another barn with dry stalls, and the escape attempts ceased.

Horses breach their confinement to get away from situations that threaten them or get to circumstances that satisfy them. A confirmed escape artist may start his career in response to an authentic threat to his well-being within a stall or paddock. Yet after a time or two of enjoying the good eating and unfettered socializing that may come with the newfound freedom, the literal or figurative greener grass on the other side of the fence/door becomes the motivation.

If you have an emerging problem and want to nip it in the bud, examine the escaped horse's living situation closely for any environmental or social factors that may be goading him to leave his space. If your horse is continually escaping a particular stall, take a minute to stand in it yourself. Look around and ask what it might be that is making the space so inhospitable. Does it contain a bees' nest or other insect threat? Does the roof leak during downpours? Does a loose piece of roofing or siding make a racket in high winds?

Observe the escaping horse's interactions with his near neighbors in the stable and during turnout to see if he's being intimidated by their threatening behavior. The close company of a bully may put more psychological pressure on a stabled horse than he wants to bear, regardless of the fact that a wall separates the two of them. Horses who escape from paddocks during turnout may be on the receiving end of bites and kicks from aggressive herdmates or frightened by dogs or wildlife that enter the field seeking a chase.

Horses who escape to satisfy a need may be motivated by the most basic drives, starting with hunger and thirst in cases of neglect but also including sexual urges for stallions and for mares in heat. But most commonly, the motivation to escape to something derives from the disparity between equine nature and the restrictions of domesticated life.

As herd animals, horses have an innate urge to be in the company of others of their kind. An insecure individual kept in isolation may apply all his energies to fiddling or muscling his way back to the reassuring companionship of other horses. Separation stress often causes stabled horses to fret rather than eat and rest and turned-out horses to run the fence line rather than graze. Their living spaces as well as their psyches are in disarray, making the motivation for any successful breakouts apparent: They are miserably lonely.

The inactivity of confinement is just as abnormal to horses as social isolation. The combination of pent-up physical energy and the lack of mental stimulation is usually behind ingrained escape behavior. The initial escape occurs because the horse has nothing else to do. In looking for an outlet for his energy, the bored horse begins mouthing the door latch, probably enjoying its clatter along with the oral activity. By chance, the latch releases, the door swings open, and the horse saunters out. Particularly bright horses may need just one success to learn an irreversible lesson. A couple of successes are bound to cement the idea that fiddling with the latch leads to exciting alternatives to the tedium and inactivity of confinement.

In my experience, habitual escapees are most often intelligent horses with a low tolerance for boredom, particularly when kept in stalls with little exercise and/or turnout time. Because of their intelligence, they quickly learn that fiddling with latches causes doors to open and remember the procedure to try again. Well-practiced horses can open standard latches as quickly as you can, and the average horse has about the same adeptness with doorknobs and latches as a 2-year-old child.

Fix What's Fixable
Our rescue organization took in an abandoned horse named Ranger, whose background we did not know because there was no one to give us his history. Shortly after he came to us, he began jumping fences, some as tall as five feet, to get in with mares, whom he then bullied and chased in the pasture. He was a gelding, but we suspected from his studdish behavior that he may have been gelded late in life or possibly had a retained testicle. We tried putting him out with other horses to combat the fence-jumping habit, but he remained an inveterate bully. He bit, kicked and chased the others in the pasture. In the end, Ranger was confined to a stall and used in a lesson program where he got plenty of exercise. He was adopted by a teenager who rides him daily, and he does not seem to be bothered by being stabled during the rest of the day.

After identifying the motives for the breakouts, correct as many of the contributing factors as possible, given your circumstances. Remove or repair the sources of discomfort/threat that you may have uncovered in the escapee's stall or pasture. In confinements where the horse has experienced memorable physical or psychic trauma, correcting the problem may not be enough to erase the association, and you may need to move the horse to a different stall or turnout area.

An escapee seeking companionship will consistently be found near occupied stalls or pastures and be reluctant to leave when you do find him. Take the hint, and provide him with a more natural and satisfying social situation. Horses aren't likely to escape from a field filled with friendly herdmates, and even visual contact with other horses can be enough to ease the insecurity of some isolated animals.

If the problem is a horse who escapes from an enclosure containing other horses, study the group dynamics. A horse at the bottom of the pecking order may take to jumping the fence rather than tolerate the aggression that comes his way. Try moving him to another group, removing the particular horse who bullies him or placing him in a private run, all of which require some flexibility in your turnout arrangements.

When you own just one horse who goes wandering off the property in search of others, find him a companion animal. If you cannot afford to purchase another horse, look into fostering for a rescue organization or taking in a boarder. Companion ponies or goats may fill the social role at reduced upkeep costs.

Preventing boredom-motivated escapes means keeping high-energy horses busy. Stall toys can help during confinement, but horses' responses to them are variable. The best boredom fighter is lots of riding and/or turnout. I've seen many escape artists reformed by regular, consistent work.

Feeding programs also play a role in the motivation of and solution for escapes. Examine the problem horse's ration and body condition to be sure that he's receiving an optimum diet. If a thin horse's breakouts seem always to lead to edibles, he's obviously in need of more feed. Well-fleshed horses who escape to gorge at the feed bin are dangers to themselves and need special care to prevent the fulfillment of their appetites.

In between these extremes are confined horses whose diets supply much more concentrated energy than they actually require and much less roughage than they'd be eating under natural conditions. One antidote to confinement tedium is lots of chewing. For bored horses, cut way back on grain and processed feeds, and increase the hay ration accordingly. Make the roughage consumption even more "natural" either by doling out the hay in many small portions over the course of the day or supplying it in a hay bag or feeder that forces the horse to expend some effort to extract each mouthful.

Read page 2 for tips on selecting latches and making your horse's surroundings safer.

Batten Down the Latches
Most horses learn to unlatch gates by chance or trial and error, but a few seem to learn by watching. For instance, Suzy, a very bright Arabian mare I know, watches her handlers open latches and mimics the movements with her mouth. She's successful enough to keep her owner busy changing the types of latches she uses on her gates. Dancer is another horse I know who learned to open a complicated latch by watching a barnmate escape just a few times. When Dancer succeeded in opening her own door, she used her new skills to open the other stalls as well.

Escape-proofing your stall doors and gates makes good sense even if you don't have a resident Houdini. Door closures that allow horses to hang their heads out into the aisle and paddock/pasture gates that reach no higher than the horse's chest are open invitations for escape efforts. An inquisitive horse who gets his mouth on the door latch can fiddle it open, and a pusher with his head over the door gains needed leverage to muscle his way toward freedom.

When a stall with a sturdy sliding door is available, put the escape artist there, using a latch to secure it in the closed position. Without the latch, the horse may discover he can use his head to shove the slider open. For added security, drill a slanted hole beside the stall door that is accessible when the door is shut. Have a pin hanging by a short chain from the doorframe at that midway point so that it's ready to be inserted into the hole as soon as the door is closed.

If Dutch doors are all you have or all you prefer for your stabling, you can simply shut the top half on an inveterate escaper, but the isolation and lack of ventilation can be drawbacks to such complete confinement. The addition of a door grill or screen on the interior of the doorframe provides an inescapable barrier without impeding air circulation and visual contact with the outside world.

Another Dutch-door strategy is to add a shelf of sorts above the door latch. The protrusion interferes with the horse's ability to reach the hardware but still gives you full access to the latch.

In cases where horses can reach door or gate latches, upgrade your hardware to reduce the likelihood that they'll meet success with any fiddling they might do. At the same time you want to foil the mouthy horse, you need the latch to be readily operable by you, even with one hand. A standard sliding bolt meets the ease-of-operation standard for you, but it's not much of a challenge to bored horses either. You can upgrade its effectiveness by installing an eyebolt in the door face, turned to the vertical and located to fit in the latch handle in its locked position. When the door is closed and the latch in place, attach a snap to the eyebolt, and the horse won't be able to raise the handle or slide back the bolt. The eyebolt alone may be deterrent enough, but snaps add another layer of difficulty that few horses can overcome.

Another strategy for shoring up your existing Dutch-door hardware is the addition of a second latch on the lower part of the door. Beyond the reach of the horse's mouth, these lower closures also help resist the pressure of leaners and pushers. You can install "kick bolts" that you operate with a nudge of a foot, leaving your hands free and your body in a safe, upright position.

Commercial "horse-proof" latches are worth a try for horses who seem to have all the standard equipment figured out. And reinforcing each gate closure with a sturdy chain and snap placed out of the horses' reach is pretty good insurance that turned-out horses will stay where they belong.

Unless they're jumpers. For all the frustration latch fiddlers and door bargers cause, the most difficult breakout behavior to deal with is escape by jumping. The risk of injury to the jumper himself is high, and any entanglements or crashes he experiences can allow other horses to escape as well. Once a horse learns he can jump out of confinement, he may have to be stabled round the clock, except when he's being ridden.

Installing a higher fence around his pasture or paddock is an expensive option for continuing with turnout. Or you can probably deter a jumper by adding a T-arm extension around the top of the existing fence to support a braided electric tape extending two feet to the interior. At the next attempted jump, he'll contact the tape, feel a shock and think better of trying that trick again.

Make Safer Surroundings
Even if you don't have horses regularly on the lam, you can't go wrong by making the surroundings as harm-proof as possible. Take a critical look around your farm to identify and correct situations that could be hazardous to a loose horse.

Lock away all grain. For an unattended horse on the prowl, an open feed room is nirvana, but the devastating result of colic and/or laminitis is pure misery. Secure your feed-room door or grain-bin lids with unbreachable locks.

Separate farm equipment from horses. Horses running mindlessly past manure spreaders, tractors and spring-tooth harrows invite all sorts of ugly wounds. Store your equipment in a closed shed or in a fenced parking area. Then be diligent about putting everything away after each use.

Clear your aisles. A barn area cluttered with pitchforks, wheelbarrows, saddle racks and the like is a minefield of potential injury for a loose horse. And even if the horse isn't injured, he may do some damage to the tack and equipment left out in the open. Keep only essentials, such as halters, leads and possibly blankets, by the stalls. If you don't have a tack room, use an empty stall or build large tack lockers to contain clutter. Place tools in a neat, out of-the-way storage area, such as a shed, empty stall or remote corner of the barn.

Maintain a perimeter fence. Perhaps the greatest danger to any loose horse is access to the world beyond your farm. The solution is to make sure your horsekeeping property can be closed off. This may mean erecting a fence that encircles the entire farm, but if you look closely at your layout, you may be able to put fences between existing structures to create a "safe zone." Of course, perimeter fencing is effective only when all workers and visitors are vigilant about closing the access points whenever they come or go.

This article originally appeared in the February 2004 issue of EQUUS magazine. Find 12 more ways to keep your horse safe and protect yourself from a possible lawsuit in "Stop that Loose Horse" in the June 2006 issue of EQUUS.