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Hi Nancy:

Don't make your choice based on what is most economical.  That doesn't work 
with horses, especially endurance horses. ;)

Whatever you do decide on, make sure that you train your horse(s) to go in 
them ahead of time. I think a lot of people take horses to rides that don't 
know how to tie, or they put them in corral panels and the horses tear them 
apart and get loose, often dragging part or all of the panels with them 
thru camp.  There are pluses and minuses to each type of containment 
system.  Some things to consider:

Everybody elses horses.  If you use hotwire, for example, you have to be 
careful to set up so loose horses can't run thru it easily.  If you use a 
hi-tie or similar product, what will your horse do when (not if, but when) 
he becomes tangled in his rope.  Training ahead of time (hobbling, tying 
overnight to train,etc.) can help with that.  People put horses on ties (of 
any type) that really aren't trained to 'tie'.  They break loose, or get 
tangled up.  Or they learn to pull, and some of the ties are quite noisy.

People put horses in corral panels that have no respect for fencing, and 
push and/or shove the panels around.  They also know how to lift the panels 
up to get them loose, or they roll and get caught that way.  Or they put 
them up over a grassy area, and as soon as the horses graze that area down, 
they start reaching for the green stuff 'on the other side of the 
fence'.  If you put more than one horse in a corral panel system, unless 
you have a 24 hour monitor watching them you have no way of knowing how 
much each horse has drank, eaten, peed, and pooped.  I really think that 
paying attention to those things for each horse on an individual basis is 
extremely important.  More important than any benefit they or you will gain 
by having them together.  I think that panels that are attached to one or 
both sides of the trailer are safer than free standing ones (so says my 
truck, trailer, and horse...see below) :P

People put horses in hot-wire fencing, without realizing that the horses 
are insulated from being zapped when they have a blanket put on.  This 
results in wrecks all the time.   They also need to consider what will 
happen when other horses come galloping thru camp in the dark and run thru 
it.  I've seen that happen several times, but not as often as I've seen 
blanketed horses walk right thru the fence tape.

At the last ride, we had multiple horses galloping on pavement around camp. 
This was right next to a highway.  It is really pure luck that no horses or 
people got killed.  I and a friend were waken up at 4 a.m. by the sound of 
galloping (on pavement) horses heading towards our rigs.  The horses ran 
right thru or next to all of our horses on their ties and kept going.  Then 
turned around and came back.  I am sure that had any of us had panels or 
electric tape up that it would have resulted in an even larger multi-horse 
incident with injuries.  We got up out of bed and spent a half an hour 
chasing two of the loose horses, the third one we never saw again (it 
obviously made it back on it's own).  The two loose horses didn't even have 
halters on.  They didn't want to be caught, luckily one did like the bucket 
of grain I rounded up, and was able to neck rope him and get a halter on, 
as he wouldn't be haltered directly either.  Once caught, we couldn't tie 
either of the horses either, because they wouldn't tie.  So we had to roam 
around a large camp area (and were still the only ones up) to find where 
they belonged.  They belonged obviously to a large open corral panel setup, 
with no horses inside.  I woke the owner who argued that it wasn't his 
horses, as his were right there next to his trailer in their corral.  yeah, 
right, and I am up chasing these horses around because I felt I was getting 
too much sleep, and wanted to run around in the rain and get wet and 
cold.  ;^)

A couple of rides before this one, my friends next door had their horses in 
panels.  One of the horses put both hind legs thru the panels.  These are 
the ones with square grids, made out of aluminum.  The wreckage that ensued 
was amazing, and a miracle that the horse wasn't injured any worse than he 
was.  I've heard of at least two other accidents this year with those same 
types of panels -- the horses get a foot or leg thru one of those squares, 
and can't get it out.  The aluminum crumbles up like foil, and the panels 
are all velcro'd together so the entire system becomes one big wreck.

....and then there was the corral panel accident last year where the 
neighbors horse wrapped the entire corral panel system around my truck and 
trailer.  That horse was pretty beat up, and so was my trailer and all of 
my chairs, tables, mat, trailer ramp and my horse was freaked out pretty 
good too, he almost got crushed in the mess.

I have a page comparing the differing tie 
systems:  http://members.tripod.com/ridephotos/horse/ties.html   Maybe 
somebody could do one on corral panels.  It won't be me though, I 
definitely do not recommend them for anybody, not even my own horses.  They 
obviously do work well for some people.  Hopefully we won't now have to 
hear every single one of them telling us so ;)

Karen
in NV


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