Horse and ranch fencing myths, corrected for Burbank

A stronger fence is a safer fence.

Strength and safety are different properties, and past a point they work against each other. A horse that hits an immovable fence at speed absorbs all of that energy itself. What you want is a fence the animal sees and respects from a distance so it never tests it, and that gives a little rather than shearing when it is hit. That is why wide, light rails at eye height beat thin taut wire, and why a rail that pops off a bracket is often a better outcome than one that does not.

Any wire mesh will close the gaps between rails.

Mesh size is the whole point. The injuries that end careers come from a hoof going through an opening and not coming back out. Standard field fence with large rectangular openings is exactly the wrong size. What you want is no-climb woven wire with openings too small to admit a hoof, roughly two inches by four, mounted on the animal side of the posts. Either keep the gaps small enough to exclude a hoof entirely, or large enough that a leg passes back out cleanly. The middle is the danger zone.

Barbed wire is fine if the horses are used to it.

No, and in Burbank it is not even a choice, because the municipal code prohibits barbed, razor, and electrified wire. That prohibition happens to line up with what every horse person already knows: barbed wire on horse property is how you get deep cuts on legs and chests. A spooked animal does not evaluate the fence, it goes through it. On a property this close to neighbors and a public equestrian route, it is not a defensible risk.

Posts can be driven, since the ground here is soft.

The Rancho sits on the flat valley floor, which is coarse alluvial sand and gravel washed down from the surrounding mountains. It is easy digging, and that is exactly the problem: loose granular soil grips a driven post far less than clay does, and a horse leaning on a rail applies steady lateral load for hours at a time. We set posts in concrete here, particularly corners, gate posts, and anywhere an animal habitually stands. It costs more on day one and it is the difference between a fence at five years and a fence at fifteen.

One gate is enough.

Almost never. A working horse property wants a wide opening for a trailer, a tractor, or a hay delivery, usually twelve to sixteen feet, and a separate person-sized gate you can operate one-handed while leading an animal. A single narrow gate forces every function through the same point, which is how horses get crowded and people get stepped on. Gates also want to swing clear of the ground at every point in their arc, which on a paddock that turns to soft footing in winter means a bit of thought about clearance.

Ranch fence is the cheap option.

Per foot, rail fence is genuinely inexpensive, $18 to $38 installed in Burbank, comparable to chain link and well under wood privacy or iron. But horse property has a lot of feet. A perimeter plus two paddock divisions adds up fast, and once you add no-climb mesh at $8 to $15 a foot and a couple of proper gates, the total is a real project. The honest framing is that the rate is low and the quantity is high. Our Burbank fence cost guide lays out how the lines stack up.