Need Ideas - Horse/Dog Fence around the house

heitjer · Jan 1, 2014

Happy New Year Everyone - a few hours into the new year and already a new project!

Our house will be finished around February and I need to figure out a good way to fence the perimeter so that I keep the horses out and the dogs in. We currently have the front property fenced with the three-rail vinyl fence for years and I like it. It is easy to keep up with this and it is great for looks. My wife suggested to use this around the house as well. I think this would keep the horse out but not our dog critters in! We have all sizes for dogs (Great Dane, German Shepard Mix, Dachshund and Chihuahua). The Great Dane does not go through the horse fence but every other one does. My wife is completely against invisible fences, i.e. shocks collars.

I am bouncing around a few options - please add if you have other ideas.

1) Use the three-rail vinyl fence and complement this with a 'privacy lattice' that I cut into three slats to be placed between the bottom rail and the ground. I can screw this into the bottom rail and have it staked into the ground. The benefit is it will complement the look of the current fence.

2) Go with wood fence posts and three rails. This would allow me to place a mesh wire fence between the posts and the rails. Easy to do but causes a lot of upkeep in the long run with painting and replacing boards.
3) Mesh wire fence with steel posts, need to be complemented with an electrical wire to keep the horses from bending it.

Any ideas?

Jimbrown · Jan 1, 2014

Combo of 1 and three. vinyl post and rails with wire mesh attached.

bigtiller · Jan 1, 2014

To keep our Maltese fenced in we use hog panels. They are about 3' high and 16' long.

phiferpharm · Jan 1, 2014

I have two "jumpers" (over the fence) and a bunch of "backhoes" (diggers). I ended up putting up 5' fences buried into a trench with top and bottom rails and a decorative "X" pattern. So far the Bloodhound has come the closest to clearing the fence, but the diggers(Bassets) can't get below the fence. Two of the horses are mini's and not as tall as the bloodhound and my Quarter horse backs off when she gets up to the top rail and isn't a cribber.

amstaff · Jan 1, 2014

We went with black Woven Wire, and used this at two different properties. Some people call this no-climb. It is horse fence, and does exactly what you are looking to do: Keep the horses out, and the dogs in. If you go with the black, it really disappears giving you total view of your horses in their pasture. We simply pounded wood posts every 8 feet, then stretched/attached this wire to the posts at ground level. At a previous property I actually went to the effort of sinking the wire 6 inches into the ground... this would make our dogs dig about 18" down to have enough room to escape. Well, the dogs never once tried to dig under the fence! It was a tremendous amount of work, so I vowed never to do it again. Glad I don't own Bassets like Phiferpharm, because at our second property I just attached the woven wire to the posts at ground level. We installed 60" wire in 300' rolls. I attached a link to the place we purchased it from (Kencove Fence)... I could not find 60" high wire, rather only the 48" and only in a 200' roll. I am sure other places have something similar. I would highly recommend the black wire. Here is the link: Woven 13/48/2 Class III 200 ft Black

All that said, this stuff has been great! We have never had an issue with it. Our stallions are often in the pastures that touch our fenced-in back yard, and they have never damaged this fencing (our post and rail is another story!). I will try to find a picture of our fencing. Out of 4 dogs, only one escapes by jumping the 5' fence. His motivation is to eat horse manure!

Amstaff

amstaff · Jan 1, 2014

Quick update... I checked a little further and they do still have 60" black woven wire, just in 100' rolls. The link has a video showing that reviews installation, and what it looks like installed. Check it out. Here is the link: Woven 16/60/2 Class 3 Black 100 ft

I will try to attach a couple of pics... first one is of Rommel, our 5' fence jumping, horse poop eatin', American Staffordshire. Second pic shows two of our dogs making sure the horses stay on their side of the fence!

Amstaff

Pepsiboy · Jul 30, 2014

heitjer said:
Happy New Year Everyone - a few hours into the new year and already a new project!

Our house will be finished around February and I need to figure out a good way to fence the perimeter so that I keep the horses out and the dogs in. We currently have the front property fenced with the three-rail vinyl fence for years and I like it. It is easy to keep up with this and it is great for looks. My wife suggested to use this around the house as well. I think this would keep the horse out but not our dog critters in! We have all sizes for dogs (Great Dane, German Shepard Mix, Dachshund and Chihuahua). The Great Dane does not go through the horse fence but every other one does. My wife is completely against invisible fences, i.e. shocks collars.

I am bouncing around a few options - please add if you have other ideas.

1) Use the three-rail vinyl fence and complement this with a 'privacy lattice' that I cut into three slats to be placed between the bottom rail and the ground. I can screw this into the bottom rail and have it staked into the ground. The benefit is it will complement the look of the current fence.
View attachment 352796
2) Go with wood fence posts and three rails. This would allow me to place a mesh wire fence between the posts and the rails. Easy to do but causes a lot of upkeep in the long run with painting and replacing boards.
3) Mesh wire fence with steel posts, need to be complemented with an electrical wire to keep the horses from bending it.

Any ideas?

We have used "Pet Containment system" from Pet Safe for about 10 years. It is like a training collar for the dogs (we call them the kids) with a perimeter wire buried about 1 1/2 inches in the ground. It is SIMILAR to Invisible Fence, but it does NOT just shock. We have ours set so it makes the collar BEEP when the kids get about 2 to 2 1/2 feet from it. It will shock them when they get about 1 foot from it. Follow the instructions COMPLETELY for installation and you should have no problems. There will be a "Training Period" for the kids until they learn about the BEEP. Ours now only get JUST SO CLOSE to the wire. When they hear the beep they stop in their tracks, or turn around and go back a bit.

Sorry about the late reply, I just read your thread today.
Pepsiboy