StockGuard Fencing is a Mental Barrier
The pain associated with the electrified tape creates a mental
barrier for the horse!
These electric impulses are painful but harmless.
For the foal, that mental barrier training teaches him to
respect his electrified fence and will exist for the rest
of his life..
To maintain a respect for the fence, the horse must receive a
shock whenever he attemps to touch it, for that reason the fence
charger must be kept on at all times !
Horses have varying dispositions, and when faced with a narrow
tape (or worse, a wire fence) they can react differently.
Lets address the situations when the horse is hot or
scared:
a) The horse does not see the wire and runs right into it. As we
all know, horses are near-sighted and injuries due to wire fences
provide vets with a lot of business.
b) The horse sees the wire or narrow tape, but is agitated enough
(perhaps his barn buddy was leaving) that he tries to break
through the tiny obstacle that he perceives to be only the size
of a twig. Sometimes the horse will dance or even stand
there trembling with indecision. Some horses will actually
bump the fence to test it.
When we can take action, we generally try to distract the horse
to discourage him from going on.
You can find a lot of lucky horse owners who have never had to
cope with such critical situations as (a) and (b), or deal
with the resulting injuries, but there are so many other possible
critical fence situations that could happen.
It is best to be prepared and to use your knowledge to prevent
whatever you can.
Lets be on the safe side and decide that :
AN ELECTRIC FENCE SHOULD ALWAYS BE KEPT ON ALL THE TIME AND
SHOULD CARRY PERMANENTLY BETWEEN 4000 TO 7000 VOLTS
Previous page