If you have an older roundpen / use roundpen pannels

[Leeana]

I have a friend who owns some high dollar paint horses, she has an area enclosed with roundpen pannels for a turnout area for her yearlings. The roundpen pannels are older and some area's are rusted, one of her yearlings stuck his head through the pannels to eat grass on the other side and RIPPED HIS EAR OFF - yes, completely OFF - when he pulled his head back in, as the bottom of the metal bar ontop of where he stuck his poll through was rusted badly and he caught it on shard of rusted metal. It was tramatic for her (and me), and the horse as well as we were in the area cleaning the paddock and actually fully witnessed it ....

So, I came home and ran my hands/fingers along every inch of my roundpen as it is older and I found some area's that were rusted and sharp and jagged and wrapped them area's heavily with duct tape (HEAVILY).

If you have an older metal roundpen or use the pannels for fence, please run your hands along the bars and check for rusting and sharp area's. The area's I found on mine were very sharp and could easily slice an eye or ear off if caught just right, and the area's were about 2-3 spaces from the ground so just right where they stick their heads/necks through.

Leeana

 

[Reble]

thanks we also have metal round panels so will have to check them out.

Great advice better to be safe than sorry..

 

[Riverrose28]

OMG! Thank you for this advice. I also had a bad experience with one of my geldings, I left him in the round pen after lounging so I could clean his stall. When I went back out he had a gash on one hind leg. Vet said it didn't need stitchs but it sure scared me. Hope the horse gets well soon, so bad about his ear.

 

[Taylor Richelle]

That's so scary!!! Poor little guy, thanks for the advice, I'll be sure to pass it on too!

 

[targetsmom]

Thanks for the warning and hope your friends horse recovers OK.

In order to keep our horses from sticking heads through the round pen panels (or foals to crawl through) we attach plastic/nylon "deer" netting, with tiny openings, to all the panels. It doesn't last forever but it is pretty cheap, seems safe, and easy to replace.

 

[Leeana]

If it can help one person, it was worth posting and passing along. I use my roundpen a lot, and have some pannels up for paddocks too during the spring and summer. I sometimes turn ponies out in my roundpen when I clean stalls too, but this happened while we were right there just several feet away - so it can happen if you are there or not. Better safe then sorry..

The colt should be fine, I stayed to help while the vet was there as these were pretty much big untouched yearlings that have all been running together, so they needed help and hands to get the colt in the barn and in a stall and while the vet worked on him.

Next year I am going to put solid boards up about 1/2 way on my roundpen as I intend to work some driving horses in it (my roundpen is large), but I think wrapped it heavily in the duct tape will get us through for now.

 

[Genie]

Thanks for the warning and hope your friends horse recovers OK.

In order to keep our horses from sticking heads through the round pen panels (or foals to crawl through) we attach plastic/nylon "deer" netting, with tiny openings, to all the panels. It doesn't last forever but it is pretty cheap, seems safe, and easy to replace.

Good idea. Thanks. I am always fighting the mane that gets rubbed off due to reaching thru the board fence to eat the lawn.

Terrible about the little horse losing an ear. How traumatic

wonder if their is such a thing as an artificial ear?

 

[wildoak]

That's awful. Yes they do rust, I know some of mine are - we've already had to replace 2 or 3 panels because they were rusting through on my arena.

Jan

 

[Field-of-Dreams]

Wow, how awful.

Fortunately our round pen is relatively new and we only use it to round pen. We rarely use it at all as a turnout, as we like the guys to realize it's working time and not eating/playing time!

 

[StarRidgeAcres]

OMG!

How horrible all around!

I use round pen panels, both the mini sized ones and the regular horse ones with walk-through gates for just about everything! A lot of it has horse safety panels wired to it so the boys can reach through to the girls, but still! Holy schmoly. Thank you so much for posting this. Mine are out in the weather year-round so I have no doubt they have rusted patches. I will be checking tonight. Thanks again for the warning.

 

[a mini dream come true]

Leeana, Thank you so much for sharing this. I really hope your friends horse does ok. Things like this help new people to learn and remind long time people what can happen. I'll be checking our fence when I get home.

 

[mydaddysjag]

So sorry to hear about her colt. Hopefully there are no long term affects since the inner ear canal will be subjected to more elements now without the ear there to help protect it. I need to put up a roundpen to work horses, but to be honest, Im half afraid of them sometimes. Domingos sire died in a roundpen accident. Half tempted to just buy a gold cart and pony them off of it. If I do put one up, Im going to strongly consider wood now. Not portable, but not sharp either.

 

[markadoodle]

Sadly stuff happens all the time, and the best we can do is to prevent what we can. I too just went through a very unfortunate event with one of my Miniature mares, she had to had emergency surgery on her eyelid...

Thanks for passing along, this is a really good topic for horse owners to read and become aware of.

So sorry about the gelding, and I hope he is to a fast recovery.

((hugs))

 

[Minimor]

I have never been real keen on the metal round pens; years ago I knew of someone that was working a Morgan stallion in a metal roundpen. The stallion was cantering and somehow struck his front foot against one of the panels--he didn't get the leg caught, just smacked it a good blow against the steel panel. No sharp edges on the panel, but the force of the blow and the way in which he his the metal bar sliced his pastern badly--he came very close to severing the leg. They didn't think he was going to be able to be saved, but as it turned out the leg did heal. It took them a lot of time and effort, though, to treat that horrible injury.

 

[wcr]

I have heard of 2 situations where a big horse put their head through pipe corral rails and got their lower jaw caught on the next rail down and broke their neck and died. It seems that a 4 rail pipe panel has the perfect spacing for this to happen. I have nothing but 5 rail here. Just as another safety warning.