Planning Your Fence - Design of the fence - Constructing Your Fence

Design of Paddocks/Yards/Arenas/Tracks

Hazards
Any areas of the property that may be unsuitable should be fenced off for possible tree planting. Such areas include very wet, stony or unstable land including very steep areas that may end up close to the fence or gateway.

Slope
Due to its construction Horserail is not well suited to uneven land due to the bonded wire at the edge of the rail giving minimal vertical movement. Experience installers believe that the limit of line change is 3 degrees per post without the need of a change of angle. To minimise this problem, you should consider:

Trying to follow the lay of the land with rail fence. It will happily bend around corners following the contour.
Use a fence constructed of Horsecote coated wires over the most uneven areas.
Bulldoze the fence line prior to construction to flatten and minimise the number of dips and rises and place an end assembly or strainer (Tie off post) at the point of top or bottom of a hill or hollow in the land.
Adjust post height: Placing them deeper in the ground on a rise and shallower in hollows. This can be extended to skipping over a small gully and later building a fill in under section.
Cut the rail and Use two flat 'attachment' Buckles to change angle at the post.
Cut and rejoin one of the rails on the new line, at the point of direction change. (Be careful to clamp the two ends of rail to a plank in order to ensure that the rail is flat when rejoining using crimps.)

Number of Paddocks
The main considerations include economics, the number of incompatible animals, plus rotational grazing. The latter needs a little more explanation. Where grass is an important part of the animal's diet, it is highly desirable to graze and then spell the pasture as many of the most nutritious plants are deep rooted and will only thrive if allowed to recover between grazing. Further, intestinal parasitic worms can only survive for a relatively short time on the pasture. By grazing and spelling, many of them will die prior to be ingested by the animal, hence minimizing the need for chemical worm remedies.

Existing Fencing
Depending on how "safe" you plan to make your property, existing fences can be used to varying degrees. From placing a Horserail or Ponyrail at the top of the fence for improved visibility to adding a Hotcote electric coated wire as an outrigger on each side of the fence to keep horses and ponies well away from the danger posed by the plain unprotected wires (plain woven or barbed) to removing all the unprotected wire and using only the posts with Horserail coated rail and wire. One of the strengths of Horserail is that it is able to be place over existing posts as the post spacing is not critical as it is for timber rails.

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