My horses are out 24/7/365 with a 40’ x 10’ run in shed that runs the length of a barn. The exterior long wall is closed, but both ends are open. I can divide the run in half but have never had the need to do it.
I had a barn that had three stalls with Dutch door opening to a singular paddock. I had geldings in there that got along well and had no particular issues, but would not do that again.
My biggest fear is a horse getting trapped in a stall by another horse and not being able to get away due to only one exit.
I have two large ponies - a submissive older mare and a spunky more bossy 5 yo. They can turn out in a field together but when I left their paddock gates and stalls open the younger one would guard the doors, and chase the older one away. If the older one got into a stall the younger would chase her out more forcefully and it was an injury waiting to happen. So now if the stalls are open the small paddocks are divided (I have a 12’ round pen panel that I can turn 90 degrees to the fence and close off one side of the paddock). They can visit over/through the fences but can’t enter each other’s spaces. I can close the back doors of the stalls, open the panel and the field gates, and let them out together.
I’d keep two stalls. Maybe take out part of the partition between them, and install bars instead, so they can see and smell each other (for the companionship aspect). The gelding comes in easily – fine, do him first. Then you can leave the mare out and she can come and go at night as she pleases. That separates them for feeding, keeps them “close” to each other, but reduces the amount of human time invested in the arrangements?
We done it this way for the last 30 years. It’s not uncommon to find more than one horse in a stall (there were times all 4 would cram themselves into one stall). If they are already out in together, I don’t think there will be any issues and if there, are they will likely work it out. I do separate them for grain.
Can you use round pen panels and divide the paddock so the gelding is in the paddock attached to his open stall at night and the mare can access her stall at night from the pasture ( or stand by the gelding in the paddock) if she chooses?
I did this when I acquired a young horse. I wanted him out 24/7 with access to shelter but my mares had to be dry lotted overnight.
I kept horses for years in my previous small farm with runouts opening to paddocks. Horses came in to eat in separate stalls; then stall doors were opened and they came and went as they pleased. Usually just 2 at a time, but I have had a weanling in with two adults and would often find all 3 sharing a stall. I’ve also had 2 mares with foals sharing a paddock attached to two stalls; mares were separated until foals were old enough to go together and mares were less protective (mares had lived together a year prior to foaling and were close friends). The mares and the foals learned how to get along in two stalls, sharing or not sharing as the case may be. I would put hay in each stall, and yes the boss horse would sometimes swap stalls to get the “better” haynet, but as soon as Boss went to his exit, the less dominant horse knew what was coming and already started to leave…so avoided being trapped.
My horses are generally smart enough to recognize when a Boss wants in, and will exit the stall before getting pushed out. My stalls were slatted walls, so they could see outside and recognize when Boss was approaching. It helped that my dominant horses were not aggressive beyond pinned ears and snarky faces, and generally patient, not looking to hurt anybody.
As humans, we tend to think in terms of 12x12 space per 1 horse…but in reality horses prefer to be closer than that with their best friends.
You could modify the dividing wall between the stalls to be a sliding door so you can close it to make two separate stalls when they’re eating but keep it open during turnout so they can flow through the two stalls. This works beautifully at my barn.
I have a shed row style barn situated between my two paddocks. So the front doors of the stalls open into paddock A and the back doors of the stalls open into paddock B. I always leave the stall doors open, so if they’re in paddock A for the week then the front doors are open, back doors for the week they’re in paddock B, and both front and back when I have the whole area open to them. They come and go as they please and while we have nasty faces from the grumpy mare at times, I have yet to have an incident. The other two are aware of her movements and seem to know when she’s coming towards the stalls so they hop out before she even gets to it.
For reference I have the following: the grumpy mare is a 10 year old large pony, my other mare is an 18 year old saddlebred, and my gelding is a 25 year old small pony. The large pony and saddlebred have been together for 4 years now, and the gelding was added 3 years ago. The gelding and saddlebred will calmly chill in a stall together and share water/food buckets, so it’s just the large that gets a bit twitchy with attitude.
I have seen some really cool removeable dividers over the years. Some of the simplest styles involve regular gates. Another simple style is to make a track that you can stack planks in. I’ve worked at a few breeding farms that had neat designs that involve more carpentry, like swinging or sliding walls.
My ideal barn would have external doors that open under an overhang, but also have some sort of way to remove the wall between stalls easily in case you want to allow multiple horses free access.
You’ve gotten lots of great suggestions here. Unless the doorways are big enough for both horses to squeeze through, I’d be cautious of having only one ingress/egress. The only other thing I might add to the mix is, given the size difference of your horses, is the idea of a kind of creep feeder set-up. My big mare is a witch to my little old shetland, so I build a creep feeder fence in front of his run-in so he can get in and out at will, and she can’t.
I really love this idea as well. I’m going to try this as it sounds like we have similar setups. Now to get the aisle prepped. It’s a 12x 48 ft brushed concrete aisle. Going to put dow more stall mats for comfort and put an aisle guard on my wash rack that is currently housing my small amount of barn hay storage. I have wood stalls, do your horses mess w the barn itself when they’re hanging out??
It can happen but my horses rarely do it. The original Dutch doors here were very chewed down; that may also have to do with how long horses were stalled versus turned out.
Mine do exploratory chomping on wooden rails even when they have plenty of hay I use the red hot stuff you can paint on it and am contemplating doing metal edging on the new ones.
My neighbour, who is building the new set up, said that his wife’s retired horse once ate through an entire 2x6 rail the night after he put it up
“Exploratory” chewing is a good description for what mine do. Despite 24/7 turnout with free choice hay (or grass, depending on the season), mine nibble a little on the barn and on the occasional tree. Rarely enough to do any real damage, though. My little palomino princess has a particularly…charming…affinity for plastic, but she’s a bit of a weirdo in that respect.
Once we finished building an overhang to our old hay barn one evening late, so we didn’t take the time to paint wood surfaces with creosote, used then to keep horses from chewing.
We had lined the walls with 3/4" exterior plywood, but above that the framing 2" x 4" were exposed.
Horses had already left for night grazing, not expected back until morning feeding.
Morning came, we went to feed, horses had been in maybe 30 minutes and in that time our official beaver horse had already chewed thru some 2" x 4" in several places!
Those fresh pine boards must have been like candy to him.
Lesson learned, don’t leave for tomorrow what you know you need to do today.
If the mare doesn’t want to be caught and doesn’t need much food, could you bring in gelding for his food and feed the mare outside? Let gelding back out when he’s done? I had a similar setup for a while and my gelding had access to his stall during the day and closed in at night, but if other horses were inside or one was injured and needed stall + small paddock, I kept the paddock closed so my gelding was only in the field. Only one horse with access to one stall, maximum. No in and outs for multiples without separation. My gelding would often let himself in early to check on the status of dinner or maybe take a nap under the fans. I could see there being a fight possible if multiple horses thought it should be dinner time now.
That said, my grandparents had an in and out setup with their dry lot for years with everything from east keeper ponies to horses on vacation to mares and foals, and the only fights seemed to be with the chickens.
Lesson #2: Don’t use soft woods, like pine, for horse facilities if you can help it. My barn is oak - they nibble a little but not hard/long enough to destroy anything!
Mine destroyed the gutters aka butt scratchers. This created a problem where water was running down the outside of a gutter and between the hardiplank and the particle board of the siding. If I had to do it all over again ( and had more money) I would increase the width of the overhang and not use gutters and let the water just run off the roof into the trees planted on the hillside. So if you use gutters find some way to keep the horses off of them.
