I have a 50+ horse boarding facility, although the main barn
with “inside stall” rather than shed rows and large runs has 22
stall with runs and 4 stalls without runs.
The stalls are very open, both side to side and at the
front, being made from large welded pipes with wood only on the sides.
And the wood doesn’t come down to the ground, so lots of air flow.
The stalls are odd sized – 14x15 so stall mats would be very expensive as
well as difficult. So dirt covered with shavings and I’m kind of
stingy with the shavings (more from a time issue than a cost issue, although
they are very expensive). For the horses that pee regularly inside, I use
Sweet PDZ in their mucky spots and we otherwise take the wet shavings and
spread it out into the run, for the sun to bleach and to give the horses an
alternative soft spot to pee in.
Everyone comments how open and nice smelling our barn is.
For the 4 stalls that we have that do not have runs –
they are for foaling and layup – the two layup stalls have mats. We
had 2 horses in them for a long time because their owner didn’t want them
getting dinged or playing with other horses. These are Preifert stalls
with solid wood to the ground. It was awful, way more difficult to clean
and the urine smell was much more noticeable, at least inside those
stalls. I’d never stalls horses before and that’s definitely
not the way I’d want to do it. To do it right, you really have to
have tight seams on the mats and strip the shavings frequently and regularly.
We clean stalls twice a day (a lot of barns only do it once) and it still wasn’t
enough for the more closed stalls.
I’m much happier with our open concept although the
halter people would never consider it a suitable show barn! We never
strip stalls and even had to go for almost 2 months w/o shavings because of a
supply issue and still didn’t have a smelly barn.
Marlene
Marlene Moss
www.LosPinos-CO.com -
Boarding, Sales and More
www.KineticEquineAnalysis.com
- Saddle Fitting
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG.
Version: 7.5.519 / Virus Database: 269.22.1/1348 - Release Date: 3/28/2008 10:58 AM
