The Monster and Fences

I have been attempting to get a video of the Monster opening the gates, but she has been busy avoiding me and ignoring me.  So today we will discuss her fence testing. Lets just say right off the bat that there are very few fences that will actually hold the Monster and we have tried many different things.

The monster was in pipe corrals when we were stabled at Ft. Huachuca and those held up well in spite of her trying to climb them. She likes the pipe fencing to stand on she climbs the rails like a ladder with her front feet, but can never get all the way over.

After we left the Army, we stopped over at my mom's house for a few months until I found a new job and moved on. Mom's pasture fencing was a woven wire no climb horse fence with an electric fence strand on the top.  We figured the electric fence would keep the Monster at bay, but we were wrong. The Monster backed her tail up to the electric insulators and rubbed on the insulators until the broke and ground out the electric fence. She then leaned over the woven wire fence and crushed the top down. If we had not moved her and re worked the fence she would have had the wire so mangled that she would be able to escape. 

After we moved here to Thoreau, we had a complete barbed wire fence. Now I know some people do not approve of barbed wire as a fencing for equine, but that is what was on the property when we moved in and we didn't have an opportunity to change over all at once considering that we had neighbors to deal with who had put up some of this fencing. Anyway the Monster was quite used to barbed wire in the first place as was the old man Hobo. Our problem with barbed wire is the fact that the Monster could get her head and neck between the strands of wire. After her head and neck was through, she would carefully lay her chest on the wire and lean  or lay on the wire. She would scoot her hind feet forward until they were almost touching her front feet and she would press on that wire until it would stretch and finally break. The Monster was extremely careful with her barbed wire fence testing. She never got a scratch or wound from the barbed wire and we spent alot of time and money trying to keep the neighbors fences fixed.  

So once again we started looking for options to use to fence and cross fence an 11 acre parcel of land. We had to be careful on our choice of fencing due to all the surrounding neighbors. We already knew that the use of field fencing and/or welded wire alone would be destroyed as she would lay over it and press it down. We knew electric fencing was out because she would back up and rub the insulators with her tail and ground out the wires. Pipe fencing for 11 acres is quite expensive and extremely difficult to put in when you have to drill through the rocks in order to set the pipes.  

We even thought about corral panels, but they don't stand up well to a mule climbing them.The other problem with coral panels is that the Monster actually knows how to open the drop pins. Lets just say she has VERY flexible lips. The other problem with corral panels is that if she is not opening the drop pins, she is climbing on them or another of her favorite things is to put her head and neck through one of the lower openings and then lifting the panels off the ground and slamming them back down on the ground. Besides really flexible lips, she also has an intensely strong neck. 

So we finally went with a combination fence that combined a no climb wire mesh fence with two strands of barbed wire as a topper. We put the barbed wire just a few inches apart and a couple inches above the top of the wire mesh fence. This made it impossible for the Monster to get her head in between strands of the wire  Plus the two strands of barbed wire on the top also make it harder for her to lay on the fence.