Pallet Pen

When we were beginning to look at re-doing the fencing around our house, we set about searching for a method that would be friendly to both the environment and our bank balance. Pinterest had a wealth of ideas but, after many hours of getting distracted by less important things on there, the one that caught our eye was the pallet fencing. It’s beautifully simple: Drive two poles into the ground, slide a pallet over the top, and there you go – one solid fence panel with minimum mess or fuss.

Pallets can be sourced for free from many of our local businesses, so one sunny Saturday we hitched up the trailer and went for a drive into the industrial area. It wasn’t long before we hit the jackpot and returned home with a trailer full of good quality pallets. At that time the horses were free-ranging around the property and Danny was beginning to take advantage of his freedoms, so our first job was to set up a pen so that we could physically confine him. Enforcing physical limitations on him, even if only while feeding and grooming, has always been an effective way of reminding him of his behavioural boundaries.

With the help of Valentin we brought 7 pallets into a corner of the paddock. No fancy stringlines or measurements for this job, it was a case of close enough is good enough! Using the existing fenceline as two sides of the pen, we laid out the pallets on the ground and shuffled them around until we had another two sides. Then it was simply a matter of driving two star pickets in to the ground, and sliding the pallets up and over them. About 18 months later we moved the pen and kicked ourselves as we realised that it was much less effort to slide the pickets into the pallet than to slide the pallets over the pickets! Anyway… For the gate, we used only one star picket as a hinge and put the second one on the outside of the pallet so we could use it to tie the gate shut. We left the pickets sitting above the pallet line so that we could use them to hang bridles and halters and whatnot off, but we capped them off with small tin cans (not yet done in the picture) to prevent the horses from injuring themselves on the sharp edges.

This setup worked incredibly well and the only problem we ever had was when were woken at 5am one morning by an almighty bang. Investigations revealed that Danny had managed to shut the gate on Manny who had been fed his dinner in there with the gate left open. Poor old Manny had been trapped in there all night until he finally got fed up and knocked the gate down with a very powerful kick. We found the gate completely flat, the star picket bent 90° at the ground. Not bad for an old man! Fortunately Manny was unharmed and since the pallet also survived undamaged, we were able to reset it with a new picket. From then on we made sure we tied the gate open!