Prior to moving the horses to my house, I leased a barn. At that facility, the horses had access to 3 small stalls and a lean to when ever they were out of the main barn. I never noticed any issue. UPON moving them home, the PRINCE decided he couldn’t share space with ANYBODY. I had to lock them out of their stalls or lock them in their stalls individually AND I had to add a divider to the lean to so the PRINCE could have a section of lean to all to himself.
Jump forward 3 years. I had noticed that 2 of the 3 (one of the 2 was the PRINCE) were sharing the lean to area without a ruckus. I have tried leaving the stalls open this spring. So far, so good. They all seem to be handling the situation well.
My stalls are in one row and I set up sliding doors between them. The sliding doors are always open so the horses just walk right through and nobody gets trapped. I would not be comfortable with the possibility of a horse or dog getting cornered in a stall.
I’m going to echo a lot of what was said here:
I loved the convenience and security. I disliked the fact there was no proper road/path to access my barn for services or deliveries. In the winter it could get quite muddy around it, which was an inconvenience for the vet/farrier.
My current barn has two walls that open directly into the pasture: one has Dutch doors into the stalls, then the back door of the barn also opens into the pasture. I love having this type of setup. It’s convenient for everyone. I don’t need to lead anyone to/from the barn, but also the farrier can back right up to the door and walk into a nice, dry aisle.
I didn’t have any problems for decades… until I did. At the current farm, out of the blue my one mare started trapping her friends (whom she lived with peacefully for years) in stalls and kicking the living sh*t out of them. She broke ribs, caused internal hematomas, it was ugly.
I thought the first time was a fluke and mistakenly kept allowing the whole herd to have access to the stalls. A week later she did it again to a different horse.
And yes: we tried to find a physical/medical explanation for the change in behavior. We never found one. While I don’t doubt there is something that caused the change, my point is that whatever it may be we can’t even find it with diagnostics.
Our old vet’s complaint, he spent half his time working on injured horses courtesy of the wrongheaded idea we have to keep confined horses together “to be horses”, “horses are horses and will have their differences” and such.
When horses are in places they can’t get away from one wanting to play or having a grumpy moment, there will be the time a horse will hurt another during their play or fights.
If we manage horses in smaller areas, that they be safe from each other is more important than we be happy watching them in their better moments being happy and friendly
We would not like to live confined with someone that is friendly 90% of the time but we don’t know when it will lose it and start beating us?
Why do we expect horses to be happy and not stressed in those same circumstances?
Better set our horse management up for success.
If we are keeping some horses together, avoid “pinch points” when laying out facilities.
Our horses will thank us.
Maybe I’m just lucky, but in 17yrs of horses at home, not only do they routinely share stalls, but I have had zero injuries from the practice.
I am on my 3rd set of geldings (never a mare owner, so figure that in) & added #3 - a mini - 5yrs ago.
Before that 1st pair: 16h TB & 17h+ TWH routinely shared a 12X12 box stall.
They bring themselves in & separate into “their” stalls to be fed.
Mini routinely shares post-grain hay in the Walker’s stall.
All 3 occasionally bunk together as evidenced by varying poop piles in a single stall.
My pony also lets other horses out of stalls via the Dutch doors. So that’s another consideration for any setup that allows horses access to the exterior of a barn. Especially if you have a pony.
Yes, Mini is my Monster (yes, created by me ). Enters the barn with me, through the service door.
Can nose open unlatched stall doors to the aisle.
TG, horse & pony are too polite to leave their stalls unasked.
My barn is in the pasture on three sides. The front is set into the fence line. I greatly prefer turning in and out via gate opening as opposed to having to lead horses. I like being able to drive right up and into the front of the barn without opening any gates.
Barn is a work in progress. Currently using the front half to park trailer and tractor with a workspace / aisle to left of trailer. Stalls in the back with gates out to paddock and gates into barn. It’s not pretty yet but is very easy to work in so far.
My barn design includes the stalls turning out to the drylot and opening to my turnouts. Just built so can’t yet show you a satellite view but did give my best try at Google Maps on the layout. I love having so many gates and being able to drive all the way around my barn and be contained within fencing.
Also put a few pictures. My horses aren’t stalled however we do have a friend visiting who is on stall rest and it works great for him to have company.
Barn project is still under major construction and a work in progress too.
This was my first shot at Google Maps so hope you can figure it out:
Sorry for the slow reply, I’ve had a bad case of brain fog the past week and couldn’t keep my attention on the job long enough to string together a coherent reply.
I’ve never seen snow, your scenery is beautiful.
Duly noted, no glass within hoof’s reach of the horses!
Thanks @Janet, that looks very handy. Do you find a lot of dust gets in your house from the proximity of the barn?
Thankyou, that actually solves the ideal scenario that I had pictured in my head. I want to eliminate walking horses (or feed) to/from/between paddocks but wasn’t quite sure how to structure it. Connecting them all to a dry/sacrifice yard at the barn is a great idea, thankyou.
@stb do you ever have any issues with horses fighting in the aisle/alley? Is it wide enough that horses can get away ok?
I tried really hard but I couldn’t quite visualise it I’m sorry
Do you have any pics?
Go for it, I don’t mind. I actually have the same concerns. I really like the idea of the dry lot hanging off the stalls but not sure about the risk of horses ending up in the same stall, or one horse picking on another if they end up in a tight space.
Thanks for the pics PaddockWood. Your setup looks great, you’ve clearly put a lot of thought into that.
You guys have all convinced me to go for a dry lot off the barn and then access to paddocks via gates from there. That’s a far better idea than leading horses between paddocks. And having one (or more) sides accessible via driveway.
Apologies that I couldn’t reply to everyone but I read all of your posts, thanks for your tips and photos.
@leesa1 my aisle way behind the barn is 12’wide, so narrower than I would have preferred. I will say that I generally try to leave the gate to the dry lot open when it is close to feeding time. This way the boys can come back into the dry lot and wait to be fed. I have found that my older gelding gets grumpy when he is ready to eat, and he can be pushy to the other guy. We haven’t had major scuffles - no kicks, but some skinned hair from bites and lots of ugly faces type of thing.
If you are setting up your own place I would definitely make your aisle space wider than mine.
I have had multiple horses with access to multiple stalls for over 30 years (this barn and the previous), and I have only had one problem. That was when the not-yet-gelded-yearling-colt was cornered, and kicked by the older “boss” gelding. It looked pretty bad, but healed with no complications.
Whenever I introduce a new horse to the group, I keep the stall doors closed for a few days, until the “herd dynamics” settle down.
As you can see by the lines overlaying the fences, I also have a layout where I just open and close specific gates to rotate the fields, without having to lead the horses in or out. My “aisle” to get to the further pastures is 24 feet wide.
Leaving the outer stall doors open all day has a potential for the bedding getting soaked when it rains, so I have a 10 foot overhang.
Yes, I have dust in the house, but I attribute that to our large, longhaired Estrela Mountain Dog. He gets muddy and then, when it dries, the dust just falls out. Before we had him (about 5 years) we did not have a dust problem, so I do not think it is due to the horses.
ETA that I have replaced my glass windows with plexiglass (or something similar). They did not get kicked, but the horses pushed them outwards from inside the stall (probably rubbing their butts).
One of the barns I boarded and worked at had the barn in pasture 1, and their riding ring in pasture 2, with no alleyway between. I definitely have more cons then pros.
PROS
Made feeding and turn in/out to pasture 1 super easy
Had an extra run in attached to the barn
Horses being lead into the ring were still fenced in.
Horses breaking out of the barn were still fenced in.
CONS
The horses in pasture 1, sat at the door playing with the handle until they knew how to open in and break into the barn and feed room.
The run in on the side of the barn was just standing stalls, and not designed for horses to be in and out on their own, resulting in horses getting ‘stuck’ by other horses
To turn out a horse in pasture 2, you had to go through pasture 1, resulting in being surrounded by other horses, same with going to the ring
Area surrounding the barn got super muddy.
Any deliveries/farrier/vet had to carry items from the gate to the barn or else you had to move all the horses.
All the horses in pasture 1 would crowd the door and try to push past you into the barn. This was not safe at a lesson barn with children.
Biggest con? A child in the ring, (in pasture 2) fell and needed an ambulance. So we had to remove all horses from both pastures to make it safe for the paramedics, but the horses made it too muddy for the ambulance to go through the pasture. So the paramedics had to continue on foot, delaying care to the child.
I have two horses together and because one of them is a kick first, think later type the only shelter they can have when together only has two sides. Otherwise the kicker corners the passive horse and kicks the living snot out of it (for what seems like no reason).
Certainly not access to stalls allowed.
When I designed my set up I planned to leave the stalls open as their shelter during the day but I quickly learned that was not an option.
I also cannot leave stalls open for shelter. I don’t have anyone that is aggressive, I do have one that gets bored and herds everybody around. He’ll nip them to get them going. He thinks it’s fun to go into a stall with a peaceful horse and watch that horse turn its self inside out to get away from him. So technically he’s never hurt another horse, but I could see a variety of injuries in the making and worked out different arrangements.
My barn is tiny. and I don’t have huge pastures. But I do like the set up of it. I’m also one who would not leave stall doors open even if I could. I preferred to put a large run in connecting to the barn aisle. I can treat it as two stalls (one a mini stall with a run, one larger that can suffice for both of them as a run in) and this opens onto the sacrifice area which has gates into turnouts from there. I would never want horses ‘circling’ the entire barn…but I’d design it to have one end open with the attached run in the aisle door opens onto instead. my set up has heater water buckets and fans for this matted run in/stalls when closed area. I really love it!
I do not have a boarding barn or anything. Our horses are at our house on small acreage. There used to be a falling down shed row barn in my pasture, but we knocked it down and put up a new center aisle barn. My horses use the center aisle as a run in a lot of times which is nice because they can get out of the rain. Unfortunately, they also tend to use it as a litter box. We have spring gate handles on the front and back of the barn that we put up to keep them out when we are working in there. If we need to unload stuff, we just put some hay out somewhere in the pasture to distract them. It works pretty well. I wish I had enough room to make small paddocks attached to the outside of their stalls, but we just can’t do that. When we had a big snow once, we put up some tape and some plastic poles in the center aisle of the barn so they could come out of their stalls but still be separated. It worked out pretty well for that.
I can get not having room for runs from each stall…but couldn’t you make a lean to right across the front in this view…where they can get out of the rain /elements but you still have a gate to keep them out of the aisle?
). Enters the barn with me, through the service door.
