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| Horses see in black and white ... and what they see in a cattle guard is as lines across the road and do not see the depth at all ....
because they have very poor depth perception .. ever wonder why your horse will put his head down to look at a log, trailer or rock before stepping into or over it ... he is measuring how high it is ...
Once a horse is taught to cross anything that looks like a line ... i.e. street centerlines. parking lot lines, or crosswalks .... it is no longer safe for him to be around a cattleguard ...
Buy you a solar gate opener that requires a remote or pushbutton panel to be used on both sides of the gate ... most have a motion sensor to open them going out of the drive ...
Edited by BARRELHORSE USA 2014-04-24 1:10 AM
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 Certified Snake Wrangler
Posts: 1672
     Location: North MS | I read the book "Beauty" as a child. The main character had to shoot his horse due to a cattle gap and a storm i've never cosidered owning or installing one since |
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BHW's Simon Cowell
      Location: The Saudia Arabia of Wind Energy, Western Oklahoma | I had friends from up north that called them a "auto gate". LOL I never could figure out if that meant it was a gate for an automobile or a automatic gate. |
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 Half-Eaten Cookies
Posts: 2076
    Location: Fort Worth / Springtown | my main barrel horse got loose on a neighbor's property while my dad was working him over there - he took off down their long paved driveway to the gate where the cattle guard is, jumped the cattle guard and continued down the road. That was 10 years ago and the hoof-slide marks of every one of his steps all the way to the cattle guard and over is STILL THERE - everytime I see them, I think of how that could have happened so differently. I would say no to cattleguard! |
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Veteran
Posts: 103

| My neighbor where I used to live on a busy highway had one, and his horses got out all the time. Luckily, none ever got hit but he eventually put up a gate with an electric keypad. Could not trust the cattle guard to keep them in. |
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       Location: naz, tx | bluerose2001 - 2014-04-24 1:50 AM I read the book "Beauty" as a child. The main character had to shoot his horse due to a cattle gap and a storm i've never cosidered owning or installing one since This is exactly what I think of too! i read that probably 25 years ago, and I can still remember crying my eyes out when i read that part.
We do have some places that have cattleguards where we run bucking horses. We keep a gate closed on them, but have had one still get a leg stuck in one....
Edited by jjhajek 2014-04-24 9:17 AM
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The Advice Guru
Posts: 6419
     
| There are different cattle guards.
The one we have the bars are spaced far enough apart that horses can stick their entire leg through without getting caught up, and it is only 3 feet deep.
We had an old appy that would walk across either step on the bars or put his legs through. Sadly he taught our other horses to do this too.
I have also seen the neighbours cows jump over ours.
We can't remove ours as it is property of the oil company, but honestly it is useless.
I would look at installing gate that opens automatically instead of a cattle guard. You can get some that are solar powered |
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 Always Off Topic
Posts: 6382
        Location: ND | cattle guards + horses= escapes and high vet bills..... |
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Regular
Posts: 84
  
| thank you so very much... I emailed this to my daughter with your posts.... I hate cattle guards.... thanks for the input |
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  Ms. Marine
Posts: 4642
     Location: Texas | I don't see much use for having a cattleguard when there's going to be horses around. A horse is either going to try to walk across it or jump it. |
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