I am building dutch doors on the exterior wall of my horses’ stalls that will open to a dry lot. We are building ourselves so we can make them any size we want. I just assume stick with the standard 4 foot wide, 7 foot tall overall dimensions, but how tall should I make the bottom part of the dutch door? Should it be 3.5 feet or should it be slightly taller, like 4 feet? (My horses are 15.2hh and 16.1hh and I am not concerned about them trying to jump out - they are older and smarter than that) Thanks in advance for the advice!
We usually go 52" high. We don’t have solid doors, but screens. Most handy horses can jump 4’ from a standstill.
When is doubt…put a rubber coated chain across the doorway at 4.5 feet.
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I’ve seen some that have 3.5’ and I think that is way too low. Even perfectly placid horses can do stupid things… why bait them with a low door?
Personally, I’d go for 4’. That leaves a large enough opening up top to prevent horses “braining” themselves on the door frame, but small enough that it’s less of a tempting escape route.
Our horse jumped out at 4’ and got high centered - took a bit of manipulating to get him off it.
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i had mine altered to be over 4’ for the jumping out reason
Ours are 4’6 and we have had a couple jump out over the years-- no wAy would I go shorter.
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You can’t build a dutch door that will not ever allow a horse to jump over it as all the above posts prove. You simply have to know your animals and not leave them with the top open at times when they are inclined to leave. For some horses that is never have it open. Other horses it is able to be open all the time. Kind of like some horses do not stay in some fencing.
I believe mine are literally half doors so 3’-6" tall. I like the idea of 4’.
The doors at the place I lease are 4’6". I hate them - I’m only 5’1" and I own/ride Arabs, so neither I nor my horses can see over the darn things comfortably! For larger horses, they work great, but not so much for my situation.
