Best Fence for Your Buck?

Getting ready to fence in my side pasture, and will be using t-posts and braided electric poly wire. T-posts will be capped, of course.

A single strand of 1/4" electrified white polyrope, 3' off the ground with posts 30 apart is all we need for our four mares. No one has ever gone under, over, or through it. You can't beat that for cost or setup time.
Posted via Mobile Device

Two strands of electric with good stout wire. The heavier the wire the better it carries the charge. The top strand is the hot and the lower the ground. You can run a third line below that which is another hot line. Wire should be used for the main containment area. The ropes, ribbon, etc. is fine for dividing the pasture within the main containment area. The wire is wind resistan and as long as very strong corners are built your posts on a straight run can be up to 50' apart. The wire doesn't have to be real tight like barbed wire. A little movement will keep the horses farther back. My posts are about 30' apart and the wire has done it's job for 20 years. But, the corners are very well braced. Each corner uses 5 posts with tight wire running diagonally from top to bottom (forming an X) on each side. The corner wires were done with a special tool and a little do-hickey that ratchets them tight. As the wood may shrink a little the ratchet will retighten the wire.

We put up flex rail a couple years ago (which can be electrified if necessary but we don't need to). Best. Fence. Ever. Not hard to install at all. Probably more expensive than regular high tensile, but so much safer for the horse.

Field fence is what I put up, the kind that has 2 inch rectangles at the bottom and progresses to 6 inch squares at the top. I've got electric along the top and 18 inches up from the bottom.

While electric is good for keeping a horse away from a fence (so they don't get a hoof caught in a field field or a leg trapped in high tensile), it won't keep them away from the fence if they slip into it or kick into it. I had a mare roll into a field fence with electric on top/bottom; she got her front leg caught and messed it up badly. I had another mare kick through high tensile (electrified) and she got her back leg twisted between the two wires and took the skin off to the bone.

While I realize there is no "safe fence" for horses (they can hurt themselves on anything; we had one kill itself on a wooden fence), I would certainly consider the cost versus safety factors before putting up a fence.

We have a section of pasture where we put temporary "step in" plastic post with electric tape. Cheap, easy, and relatively safe, but not something I would do as the only fence keeping them in. Your cheapest, safest fence would probably be something electric, either multiple strands of polytape or polyrope, with wooden posts. You would need to keep this tight at all times, or the wind will wreak havoc on it. Personally, I would avoid field fencing at all costs. If you use wire, I would opt for the coated wire at least; I've seen too many horses that have slid into a high tensile fence and sliced open their chest/front legs.

As far as cost for running electric: we have a very large charger than runs a couple miles of fencing (with lots of weeds), and it cost us about 72 cents a month to run. So if you are considering using electric, don't let the operating costs scare you away.