Pedigree Query

I am going to be putting in a paddock in about a month (when the ground thaws!) are treated posts safe for use with horses?

Nancy, I have recently had to evaluate that very thing, and I have ended up deciding to use cedar posts. My reasons were:
My horses seem to really like the taste of treated lumber, which is toxic to them, and they will chew it FIRST.
I have a plethora of pole cedars that we can cut down, and a mill near me will strip and shape them for $1 a post, and I can't beat that price.
I don't want to put treated wood in the ground because the chemicals leach out into the ground.
Treated posts, by the way, are treated to resist insect invasion. If you "cut" the post (ie: lop off the top) you open the post right back up unless you go back and seal it. Cedar has none of those problems.

By the way, we set ours using dense grade gravel, which we get by dump truck for $110 a load. Concrete is a pain to work with and if you use it with treated posts there is a chemical reaction between the treatment on the posts and the concrete that will rot them through in no time flat.

I once put up a split rail [cedar] fence and the horses loved it. It took one filly about three days to eat though her paddock fence and rejoin the colts.

I may be wrong about this but I don't think the new treatments are as toxic as they once were.

Anyway, a hot wire will teach them to respect fences which keeps them safer.

I didn't know they made split rail in cedar - usually poplar, isn't it? But what do I know, I really haven't looked a split rail in a long, long time.