I’m curious to see how everyone’s answers vary. Include your discipline and amount of work that your horse is in + anything else that you think may be relevant (e.g., limited space).
5 horses- 3 currently competing endurance horses, 1 retired cushings mare, 1 yearling filly. Riding horses and filly are out 24/7 with a run in and 10 acre field (about 5 acres of which are a pretty decent hill). Retired mare is in/out depending on season and grass amount (right now because of the high sugars in the grass she is in about 23 hours a day)
6 horses, all on 24/7 turnout with a roundbale and 3-4hrs grass adjacent - one is a DQ, one is an eventer, one is a hunterpacer/foxhunter/eventer/jack of all trades, and the other three are retired and/or trail riders. They have never looked or felt better. Even the retirees are fat and fit from being out and moving around constantly. I won’t go back to stalling voluntarily.
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For mine, it depends mostly on weather conditions. I have four horses at home and just under 7 acres of pasture. The horses go out around 7:30 am this time of year and stay out til they want to come in, weather permitting. Most days, that’s around 1pm this time of year - it gets hot and buggy and at that point they prefer to hang out in their stalls with some tasty hay, lounging under their fans. In winter, they go out a bit later (after frost is off the grass) and stay out til late afternoon, when we bring them in to ride (or it starts to get dark.)
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Mine are in overnight, which means they’re out 8-12 hours ish, depending on season. Stalls have large runs and they’re nearly never locked in (only for hard blowing snow, maybe once or twice a winter season.)
I’d love to have them out full time but don’t have the space to dedicate, and it does work better for me to have each horse come in for their own hay. One mare is also much happier lying down in a stall overnight vs outside.
I’ve got three at the moment, all in different places. All are dressage horses. Horse 1 is out 24/7, retired to trail riding. He does spend nights on a dry lot for part of the year due to his desire to become obese.
Horse 2 is finishing up rehab for a suspensory strain, working reasonably hard now. He’s in an in/out stall with the door open for 2-3 hours per day after he’s been ridden.
Horse 3 works first thing in the morning, then goes out by 9 am until he wants to come in. Sometimes that’s 11, sometimes it’s 3. Sometimes something upsets him and he has to be brought in for a time out, then he goes back out again in the afternoon. He’s a stallion, and pretty sensitive to the other horses around him.
Out from abut 9 to 7 in a very big hilly pasture. 24 year old OTTB. I believe it is keeping him sound. His stall is very airy.
I have 4 horses who I try to keep out 24/7 but with some of the awful weather we’ve had lately I’ve had to bring a couple in for 8 hours or so during the day. Of the 4, 1 is completely retired and he’s out all the time. The others are trail ridden 2-3 times a week and ridden/schooled dressage 2-3 times a week.
My mare is out from 7 or 7:30 a.m. until 2:30 or 3:00 p.m. Individual turnout, but she has 1 or 2 over the fence buddies. Every day, sometime between 2:30 and 3:00, she declares herself “done” with turnout for the day, and puts up a huge fuss. Her main over-the-fence buddy comes in around that time by his owner’s request, and my mare doesn’t like being left behind. When I first moved her to this barn, his paddock was empty and she’d happily stay out until 4:00 to 5:00 as long as she had hay.
Work: she’s 22 and a trail horse now. I do two 1 1/2 to 2 hour rides every weekend, and a couple of 45-ish minute rides during the week. We mostly walk. The barn has an indoor if the weather is bad, or trails are closed (as the ones directly accessible from the barn are from 12/1 to 5/1-ish every year).
Weather: obviously being in New England, winter is, well, winter. It doesn’t affect the routine that much, unless there is a very bad storm. Barn tries to turn out, even if just for 1-2 hours while stalls are cleaned, but there are a few days every year where the horses are in all day and get hand-walked once or twice. They are also brought in if there are thunderstorms predicted, or if it’s pouring rain and cold. (My mare is good outside down to about 30 degrees with no blanket, as long as it’s dry. But she gets chilled easily if it’s cold and rainy.)
In a boarding situation, the biggest impediment to longer turnout is staffing. You need a person or persons to come early, and then someone else to come later, with a few hours’ overlap. I have only been at 2 barns that managed this, and not consistently.
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I have 3 at home. I trail ride and fox hunt. The 35 yo semi retired pony is out 24/7 except for SEVERE weather (heaves). The other two come in to eat 1-2 times a day depending on the season. If I am riding both that day they might be in for 3-4 hours and then back out.
The pony is ridden lightly (1-2 times a week for 30-45 minutes). The other 2 are in moderate to hard work depending on the season. They get ridden 3-5 days a week for anywhere from 45 minutes to 4 hours.
I find that 18+ hours of turn out (even if it seems they spend the majority of that time standing under the lean to) keeps them even tempered.
My 3 year old Fjord is out on 30 acres of pasture for 12-14 hours/day overnight with 3 other geldings (they are the barn owners/lease horses and live outside; they will come in if there is a health issue). They have a large shed for shelter if the weather is icky. For the nicer part of the year, the turnout is overnight to bring them in for some relief from the flies during the day. Once our weather changes (October/November), my barn switches everyone to be out during the day which I think ends up being for about 7-8 hours. This is the routine for all the boarded horses minus any on stall rest and we do have a “night person” that lives on site that does the evening turnout.
We work 3 or 4 days a week on foundational training and trail rides, nothing intense at the moment.
I have four at home. Right now they are turned out at about 7:00 p.m. and back in at about 8:00 a.m. I would love to leave them out longer, but the horse flies right now are horrendous and my hot-house-flower-thin-skinned TBs hate being out there. And earlier in the summer when the flies are not yet out, it’s just SO hot and muggy that the still prefer to be in their stalls with fans on. Soon when the bugs die off I will have a short window of time where they can stay out 24/7. Then when the nights get too cold (I don’t have shelters out there), they will come in at night. So they’ll be out from about 8:00 a.m. till about 5:00 p.m. One is retired, three are ridden a variety of jump and dressage days. They are all on the same turnout schedule.
Dressage. Try to ride daily. 24/7 turn out. No stable. Australia so no snow.
Between my mom and I we have three horses. Over the years they’ve gone back and forth between boarding and living at my parents farm.
Currently they are all boarded.
My A/O hunter, an 11yo warmblood gelding, lives out 24/7. Ridden 5 days/wk. He’s a cribber and an easy keeper so living out works best for him.
My mom’s 17 yo gelding and our 3yo filly (both hunters) are out at night and in during the day. So 12-14 hrs of turnout. They could live out, but for convenience of riding, feeding, and blanketing they come in. They’re each ridden 3-4 times/wk.
When they’re at my parents farm they’re out around 22 hrs/day, just coming in for a meal and a nap.
At a co-op, 11 y.o. horse, do dressage seriously but no indoor and limited funds means less aggressively in terms of competing etc. We turn horses out in the morning before 7:00 in paddocks, some larger than others, nothing you could call true “pasture” but one of them is big enough for 3 horses so not glorified outdoor stall either. They stay out until about 4:30 in the winter and between 5:45 and 6:45pm in the summer depending on whose closing that night. They all go out in crappy weather with the exception of one boarder who thinks her horse doesn’t like being rained on. There are no shelters in the paddocks…
I have four geldings at home. One older retired TB, two 4yo WBs, one 2yo WB. The 4yos are supposed to be in work (eventing) but both are currently hurt, forcing me to re-evaluate my life choices. The 2yo works on ground work a few days/wk. Everyone lives on 150’ x 300’ drylot with (2) 12x24’ shelters (no stalls) and netted hay buffet. During grazing season (May 1 - Oct 1) they have pasture access 8-12 hrs/day. The only reason it’s not 24/7 pasture access is because the WBs get too fat.
3 horses at home, one jumper, one hunter, and one semi-retired hunter! They are ridden 4-5 days a week and are usually off on the weekends unless we’re showing.
They’re out from 8am- 5 or 6pm on days I ride (my setup makes it easier for them to be out if they need to be worked) in a 5ish acre pasture. I swap them to night turnout over the weekend since they’re not getting ridden so they have more time out, so they go out from 5pm-9am on the weekend.
I’d leave them out longer during the day, but all three came from a show program with limited turnout and it has been a challenge to convince them they don’t need their stalls THAT badly :lol:
24 hours a day. My mare is 4, she’s a jumper, she’s in light work. I live in Colorado and she has a light weight, medium weight, and heavy weight and gets blanketed accordingly most nights in the winter, and gets it pulled off during the day. She also has access to a shelter. I’m of the belief that horses should not live in a box and that people convince themselves it’s ok because of their own interests.
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24x7 in a dry lot with a run-in shed. My ideal farm setup is a line of such paddocks (50’ x 100’ or so) that open into a grass pasture with moveable fencing to rotate grazing areas.
If we’re expecting horrible weather I will attach corral panels to the front of the run-in shed to lock him in there. (it’s 12x24). I built a pole barn but it is mostly hay and equipment storage, I never built out the stalls and while I would like to have them, I can’t think of when I’d actually use them so it’s never been a priority.
Two mid20’s. One is IR & Cushings, the other a very easy keeper. Both retired trail horses, mostly because I can’t ride anymore.
Turnout is anywhere from 7:45 AM to 9:30 AM, depending when I get to the barn and if I have to be somewhere. The barn is on my property.
They both have free access to the barn, fans, and hay during the day, which they take advantage of, during this beastly heat/humidity.
They come for the night at dusk, so the actual time varies by the season:)
