I’m just here to say I turn my guy as much as possible so I don’t have as much of a mess to clean up in his stall. 
his bedding is expensive! And, I have looked into Hemp bedding but can’t find it where I live. I was also intrigued by it, but I’m not sure how I feel about not cleaning the urine up. My horse pees like crazy. I can’t imagine only cleaning it once a…month?..whoa.
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Wow! This is such an interesting topic, even if handled in a weird way.
I am by no means a horse expert. I’m just an amateur that likes horses. I live in the Midwest, and even here no boarding barn that I know of has the perfect turnout situation.
Growing up I was always taught that you could only have one horse per acre at minimum. We had them fenced in barbed wire and that’s just how it was - you didn’t want your land overgrazed.
Boarding barns are obviously not observing this rule. It would be impossible. This is IMO where the trade off starts. My retired horses live at home and the stalls are just kind of like a shelter for them. I do have their field seeded and cared for, but it’s a mess right now! Even at home I was limited by how big of an area I could afford to fence in safe fencing.
I’ve been at several boarding barns through the years. I love turnout. Most of us want our horses to “be horses.” I want my horses to be out as much as possible, but boarding tends to limit turnout because of the number of horses on a small space.
There are issues no matter what the boarding situation is. I boarded at a place with more turnout (not 24/7, but all day or all night depending on the season). The issue for me wasn’t the turnout - it was that erosion had really affected the fencing and the pasture had little to no grass and the horses only got hay at night. I now board at a place that does take them out every day, but not usually to an actual pasture - but they do get hay during the day, which is a plus for me.
The other part of all of this is individual needs. I have a horse now that by breeding probably shouldn’t be on lush grass all of the time. That factors into my choices too. When I had my thoroughbred, I would’ve loved to have boarded somewhere with a pasture and run-in sheds. I don’t know if I could do that now.
At any rate, it’s complicated and YES turnout is important. When I had a horse that had colic surgery, they said that 24/7 with hay all of the time is best but they talked about things that you could do if you boarded your horse. The vet there had horses at home and had hay in front of them all of the time because they were all slender eventer types.
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