Walking On Volume 3, Issue 2, February 2016 | Page 24

Back to Basics

3 Steps to Designing your Horse Fence
By Di Stalter
Deciding to build a horse fence is the easy part. The
next step is putting it on paper, then buying and installing the best fence you can afford. Someone recently requested help in designing and choosing a horse
fence. This is how we did it.
PUT IT ON PAPER

Sit down and draw the pasture you will be fencing
on paper. It may or may not be square. One important
thing to keep in mind when laying out your fencing
is that any corner that is less than 90 degrees should
be rounded or cross-fenced. You do not want a corner
that your horse could get trapped in.
Also mark your gates. Make sure you take into
consideration your future needs when you plan gates.
Have at least one gate big enough to get equipment
through. Mark them on your drawing.
If you think you may want additional gates later,
mark them now so that you can add the extra posts
needed. You don’t have to put the gates in now, you can
simply fence over them - and add a gate later.
Add the total of all four sides to get the total lineal
feet. If your horse pasture is perfectly square, you will
have 840 feet - but I don’t know anyone with perfectly
square horse pastures. Our new one acre horse pasture
came to 880 lineal feet. Now that you have the lineal
feet, multiply that by the number of rails or strands
you will be using.

She didn’t have a lot of money for this project, so we
decided to use 3 strands of electric rope at .09 cents
per foot and one rail of 4.25 inch flex-fence at .70 cents
per foot. We designed it so that the top strand was
electric rope to discourage the horse from leaning on
the top of the fence. Under that came the 4.25 flex rail
to strengthen the fence and make it more visible to her
horse. The bottom two strands were electric rope. The
discourages pests from outside and keeps her horse
from pushing on the bottom rail to get to “greener
grass” under the fence (and ending up breaking the
fence).
WHAT’S IT GONNA COST?

To get the total cost for the rails, we multiply 3
(strands) times 880 (feet/electric rope) times.09 (cost
of the rope per foot) (3 X 880 X.09 = 237.60). She spent
$237.60 for the three strands of electric rope.
Add to that the length of one rail of flex fence. (.70 x
880 = 616). She spent $616 for the one rail of flex fence.
Whew! Kind of expensive considering she got three
strands of electric rope for less than half that! But, it
was what she wanted.
Many people get along just fine with electric rope or
tape. You decide whether you need it or not. Had she
gone with just four strands of electric rope, her total
rail cost for the whole pasture would only be (4 X 880
X.09 =) $316.80. She would save over $500 by using
four strands of electric horse fence
and not buying the flex fence. Again,
that extra $500 was a bargain if it
made her feel safe.
Since her fence was going to be
55” high, the space between the
wires was about a foot (with the first
one a foot off the ground). Experts
will tell you that the spacing should
be about 10 inches. Most of my horse
fence uses between 10 and 12 inches
of space.