Horse Farm Fencing – Gates

The gates used in a fence line on horse farms range from elegant to unsafe, hand made to mass produced and maintained to barely keeping together.

Safety is the key here and is a recurring theme in this subject.  Also ease of opening and closing.  There is nothing worse than having to lift a gate to get it off the ground for opening.  Right up there in trouble are gates that fall open when unlatched.  This leaves a gaping hole for the horse you are leading or all the other horses in the paddock to run through right past you.

Some gates leave a generous gap above the ground where a foal can roll under, out of the paddock and away from its mother.  Chaos ensues.

Some gates have wide gaps where pawing horses like to stick their legs through – usually just when their arch enemy comes up to challenge resulting in broken legs.

Some gates are not wide enough for the equipment to get through.  Oops! Some gates have too much room for just you so people have created pass through gates.  These allow humans through but not horses.  These are handy until you yourself become too large to pass through them.

Put some thought into the gates when you build the fence and engineer them correctly from the start.  It will be worth it.

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