Track systems have become more and more popular over the years, and rightly so, they're great !
Our horses have always lived out but for the past three years or so we've incorporated a track
system into our grazing land. We utilised some of the existing stock fencing that was previously
dividing the land into paddocks, then set up the remaining track using electric fence and boy am I
glad we didn't dive straight into more permanent fencing!
I have since moved the track a multitude of times, trying to get the width right in places, some
areas, like our “lane” that ties all of the fields together, are much wider than others as it can be a
high traffic and quite speedy area! Having it wider also means we can get the truck up and down
there for hay deliveries easily. Other parts of the track I actually shrunk significantly as I realised it
really didn't need to be anywhere near as wide as I had originally placed it. As our track isn't
surfaced or grass free, and probably never will be, I found that the wider areas just encouraged them
to becoming loitering teenagers a bit, as naturally more grass would be coming through in these
areas apposed to narrower sections. My narrowest part is a section connecting the “lane” to the
water area so I like to try and encourage more movement through here rather than snacking. That's
what the hay patch is for !
Since I stopped moving things around I have “upgraded” the lane posts to wooden posts but the
remainder of the track is currently still in a variety of different coloured electric fence posts. I'm
almost certain I'm not going to move the existing track again and both myself and the horses are
happy with the current set up BUT the electric posts do give me that adjustability should I need it.
For a while I had also considered “upgrading” the electric tape on the wooden posts on the lane to
stock fencing, but I now actually think that would be a downgrade! We obviously have stock fence
around our boundary and between fields and that will likely never change, but it honestly causes so
many issues and when someone inevitably bends or loosens a bit of stock fencing, it's so much
more of a task to get it back to a good state, whereas electric tape with breakpoints added takes all
of 30 seconds to put back, good as new! This added with a good Solar Powered Energiser and “the
inevitable” rarely happens anyway !
If you're thinking of setting up a track or even just putting some track elements into your grazing I'd
fully recommend starting with electric fencing. You just don't know what you may want, or even
need to change as you use the ground differently. It definitely saved us a lot of time and effort and
allowed me to experiment, than if we'd have gone straight for permanent fencing from the get go!
