cold January evening, I settled the horses and donkeys in for the night, slid the heavy wooden barn door closed, and started toward the house. I nearly walked into a pack of coyotes that were almost invisible in the darkness. It’s hard to protect against hazards you can’t see. Adequate lighting improves visibility, helping you to avoid tripping over a brush box left in the aisle and improving your ability to judge the speed and location of fastmoving objects (such as spooked horses). Outdoor lights make it easier to locate equines lingering in dark paddocks, reluctant to come in from turnout or injured and in need of help. Motion-sensor lights can also serve as a visual alarm to alert you to the presence of trespassers of any species. “Outdoor low-voltage lighting provides a soft and subtle light that does not cause glare or shadows, unlike bright overhead flood lights,” says Bill Knowles, owner of Northern Outdoor Lighting in Billerica. “These shadows caused by flood lights create contrasts of dark and light, providing places for surprises to hide, allowing animals or objects to lurk in the shadows. Properly installed LED low-voltage lighting fixtures will illuminate areas from above when installed in trees or on buildings, from the side using path lights, or from below by embedding fixtures in walls or stonework. The task-oriented lighting allows for your walkways, paths, buildings, and driveway to be seen clearly while enhancing safety to guide you around rocks, sloped areas, and other hazards.” LED outdoor lighting fixtures provide a clear view of the property, including people, animals, and objects such as fences, walls, and other obstructions; ease and visibility for tasks such as finding your keys, tools, or doing chores; and a secure feeling because vision is not impaired in the dark shadows of structures and plantings. “When designing a lighting system,” Bill says, “key locations will be identified for potential safety and security concerns that can be remedied with the use of proper lighting around your property. The lights can be custom fit to your lifestyle and schedule. Your lighting system can be controlled by your Smart phone, can be programmed by timers, and can be motion detection fixtures.”
Lock Locks may seem like an annoyance in a barn bustling with horse owners, boarders, students, instructors, veterinarians,
farriers, barn staff, and horses. But unlocked storage areas, combined with all the comings and goings in a busy barn, make it easy for someone to walk off with valuables. Horse owner Marsha Harris regularly left her tack room and trailer unlocked until early June 2019. “My two best saddles were stolen, one from the tack room and one from the trailer tack compartment,” she says. “Three police cars showed up within minutes of my call to them. They took fingerprints but had no luck. We never found a trace of the saddles. Fortunately, the insurance company was great and we got full replacement value minus our deductible.” Make locking gates, doors, lockers, outbuildings, vehicles and other areas standard practice on your farm. “If you have anything valuable, keep it locked up unless it’s supervised,” Marsha says.
Limit Access Limiting access to farm buildings and pastures can be challenging because long driveways, isolated buildings, overgrowth, and big open pastures are tough to monitor. Good fences are critical, but they can’t do the whole job of access control on their own. One simple way to limit access to your horses when they’re turned out is to avoid hanging halters and lead ropes on fences or gates. Don’t make it easy to catch a horse and lead it away. Areas that are private or restricted (for authorized personnel only) need signs that should prevent well-intentioned people from going into areas where they don’t belong. NO TRESPASSING signs offer farm owners a potential legal defense against liability for injuries incurred by trespassers. Prominent signs warning about potentially dangerous activities, locations, or conditions may be required by state or local statutes or your insurance company. To maximize their effectiveness, your signs should be as specific as possible (e.g., DANGER: HORSE BITES or WARNING: HIGH VOLTAGE instead of a generic DANGER sign). Noisy “alarm” animals (such as a barking dog, a fussy flock of geese, or a donkey) can give you a head’s up when a stranger comes onto farm property or something unusual happens, but surveillance systems with remote cameras and alarms are a lot more reliable.
Motion Sensors and Surveillance Systems The access points to various parts of your property — driveways, gates, and
doors — are among the most vulnerable areas on the farm. They offer intruders an entry and provide horses with escape routes. A motion detector alarm includes a sensor mounted near a key access point, such as a gate. The sensor transmits a beam of either light or ultrasonic waves (depending on the type of sensor) across the front of the opening. When someone or something breaks the beam (for instance, when a person walks or drives through it), the sensor triggers an alarm that may ring at the gate, send a notification to your cell phone, or contact a designated monitoring service. A surveillance system adds a camera and recording equipment to capture video of whatever triggered the alarm, allowing you to see whether the alarm was caused by a stranger trespassing on your property, a teenager returning home late, or a horse making a break for it. Until recently, such surveillance systems were prohibitively expensive for the average farm owner. “Not anymore,” says James Curtiss, a security consultant at Sonitrol New England in Rocky Hill. “Advances in technology have made even very sophisticated surveillance systems affordable for most small and midsize farms.” Reliable outdoor motion sensor alarms can now be purchased for less than $200. Systems with cameras are available for less than $1,000. Many internet service providers offer reasonably priced security monitoring services for homes and small farms. One drawback to such access-point systems is that they only cover a limited area, such as a gate or door opening. “Farms are a challenge because so many of their valuable assets are outdoors,” James says. “How can you protect things that are spread out over a large area and that are not enclosed in walls?” The answer, James says, is thermal imaging. “Sonitrol uses advanced thermal imaging combined with video analytics. We pair a thermal imager with a high-definition camera and position it to cover the area that needs protection, such as a parking area or paddock. The thermal imager can distinguish between humans and horses, even down to animals the size of a squirrel. If a human [or loose horse] enters the virtual perimeter set up by the thermal imager, it sends an alarm signal to the monitoring station.” The cost for equipment and installation for such a system ranges from
Massachusetts Horse October/November 2019
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