All of the above suggestions…but I would get some drain holes drilled in the concrete to allow urine to drain into the dirt below. We had concrete in one barn…horses slipped and pulled muscles on a regular basis. I’d drill, place mats fastened with lags into the cement and bed deep.
Definitely not. What would be the point of installing concrete at all? Plus I would have to think it would weaken the concrete.
If my stalls get so wet the concrete has urine on it, I can at least pull my mats, hose out the stall and let it dry again. Having urine soaked dirt under concrete just doesn’t sound like a good solution for anything.
In your barn - horses were slipping in the stalls or the aisle? My aisle is brushed concrete so not slippery. My stalls are smooth but covered with mats.
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Indeed. Unless the ground under the concrete is porous (like sand or gravel) the urine will just soak the ground and you may now have an even worse problem. And even if it is porous you have to “flush” it periodically to move the urine on down stream. I have wood over limestone gravel over concrete with a French drain. We never have odor problems (as long as proper routine maintenance is done and that is actually quite minimal).
Bedding deep is an approach, but has its own issues, mostly in terms of cost and waste generation. What do you do with soiled bedding? It’s not always easy to deal with. And I’m aware that proper cleaning should not use a great deal of bedding but it will always use some (less for neat stallion than for a sloppy mare) and if you’ve got a medium to large facility you have that issue.
Lots of barns in use today were built when concrete was the go-to choice for flooring as it is very durable, reasonably inexpensive, and easy to maintain as long as you have a source of plentiful, inexpensive labor. That last item is the killer in today’s world where barn labor is no longer either plentiful or cheap.
I’m not a fan of mats for the reasons noted.
There’s no “silver bullet” or other magic formula available to solve solve this problem. If you have concrete your choices are really not all that good.
G.
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I don’t know, the concrete floored stalls took half the time to clean than those with dirt did, where horses trampled the straw into the dirt, walked the dirt into dust and the wet dirt got trampled all over.
Then you had to strip the dirt stalls down to clean dirt and add dirt and pack it.
For those, we found some conveyor belting we added over the door into the stall so at least just walking in and out or standing by the doors would not make holes there.
Way more maintence to dirt over concrete floors.
Makes sense, concrete is not going any place, you can’t keep dirt from digging out with continuous walking on it.
Horses did fine in either place.
Deep litter bedding over concrete (with or without mats) is my strong preference. My current stalls have drains underneath, but I have also been happy with a converted pig barn, where there were no drains in the stalls.
I lived for over 10 years with a barn with dirt floors, and HATED it. the footing kept shifting (and mats, when I added mats) and rats and snakes dug tunnels under the bedding.
With deep litter, the regular cleaning consists of taking out the manure ONLY. If the bedding is wet, add more dry bedding on top. I only dig out the lowest layer of wet bedding every year or so. I use MUCH less bedding than I would if I took out the wet every day, or even every week. When I DO dig out the lowest layer, it goes into the manure pile- the same as if I were taking it out every day or week. The neighbor loves it for his garden.
An additional feature of deep litter bedding is that it keeps warm in the winter. As long as I keep adding dry bedding, there is no smell.
Concur with concrete over dirt. But concrete has it’s own issues. 
G.
Having grown up ina dirt barn and my trainer with stamped limestone I definitely prefer concrete. I have three horses, ironically my mares, that really never move the Mats. Even when injury has forced stall rest. The geldings are the ones that tear them up. One did at trainer as well. Not sure about the other. The urine isn’t as big of an issue. It really is only a problem for those couple of weeks where it is below freezing and i shut the barn up.
Will either her get the interlocking mats or really get them in right. I think part of the issue is that my stall is about 1 and 1/2" off the ground. So the mats fit under the stalls but can still move. Planning on fixing said issue in new barn
Oh, the walls don’t go to the ground, and mats can slide underneath? I had that problem with my Prieferts. I used stall mat clips to hold the edges of the mats but that won’t work with concrete. Yeah, definitely need to figure out how to get a solid edge to hold the mats–even with interlocking. Maybe add wood or weld metal to the stall sides? A lip of concrete would also be pretty slick.
I have dirt base floors, with stall grids and TSC interlocking mats on top of the grids. Perfect floors. Seems like a good solution for concrete floors.
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