To All

My wife receive a frantic phone call today from a distraught neighbour
who asked if I could come up with a riffle and put down a horse that was in agony caught in a fence.

I went up with a riffle and a set of wire cutters thinking that if it was caught in a fence I could cut the fence free the horse and then fix the fence.

When I arrived I found a stallion caught in between the gate and fence of a round yard.

the stallon was in a bad way and was destroyed because of it's injuries.

This all came about because the yard had been badly designed.

It was a bought commercial yard that led to the demise of this stallion.

I would therefore describe what went wrong and what people need to look for in yards so that this can't happen again.


I have included a drawing of the problem gate.

This yard although the panels were square had rounded gate tops and a 100mm gap between the gate and the panel next to it.

This stallion had jumped and had it's hoof gaught between the gate and the panel on the hinge side so that the leg dropped down to the hinge but was unable to withdraw the leg because it's hoof wouldn't fit through this gap.

this stallion because of injuries suffered by getting caught in this situation was put down.

I think that if people buy or build yards that they should be aware of the dangers stock can suffer and a design like this shouldn't be available.

This will hopefully show all people that keep stock to take extra care when buying or building equiptment as a slight oversight can be disastrous for stock

below a drawing of the offending yard and gate
Click to view attachment

Jack @ Wilja Koolies & Poll Herefords

Thank you sooo much for that info, we breed miniature horses here and have similar gate design on our fences, except that we can adjust the distance between the fence and gate by tightning the gate hinges, I will make sure to minimize the gap more by tightning because we cannot be too careful, our stallion is seperated from his girls by this gate so it is not impssible that he too would beleive he can fly and get caught, thanks again

Hi leecos,

This was the reason that I put this post up to try and not have this happen again.

it can easily be fixed by welding a piece of pipe on top of the gate that closes the gap.

I build all my own equiptment including crushes yards etc and use square gates to yards etc with a gap of 10mm between gates and yards including my crushes.

I hope this gets back to manufacturers so that they can modify their designs to overcome this problem.

Happy to help

Jack @ Wilja Koolies & Poll Herefords