New farm, let's build some stuff

I’ve boarded a couple of places where they had two 2" x 4" (or maybe larger?) boards set upright/vertically at each end of the stall walls. There would be a 2" space between the boards. Then they slid the horizontal stall wall boards between them. Easy to remove the boards if damaged or if they wanted a bigger stall.

(Looking down from above)

IIII---------------IIII
XXXXXXXXXX
IIII---------------IIII

(Edit: Had to add the hyphens, or the spacing between end boards didn’t show up correctly.)

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Some people allow this and never have issues. But when there is a problem, it can be ugly. Given how horses are great at being okay with something until they’re absolutely not, I personally error on the side of not allowing multiple horses to access such a trappy situation.

Why are you looking for collapsible or removable stall walls? There was recently a thread bumped looking for info on a poster who had pics showing how they mounted their stall wall on track hardware. It rolled back like a stall door.

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So the area can still be a run in without it being so trappy, and if needed I can put them in individual stalls (after setting up the stall walls quickly) to contain them for weather/vet/farrier/whatever.

@RHdobes563 I love that idea, but the only thing that give me pause is storing 14’ boards to span the length.

Are you still planning on building an overhang?

If so, that overhang area can be your run in, and won’t be trappy.

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No, I’m already playing games with code on the 14’. I can’t go any farther. The area has to be double purpose.

Instead of 3 10x14 stalls, can you do 1 10x14 stall and one 20x14 stall, with a larger door? The larger space can be your run in, but you’d still have two separate stalls for when they need to be in.

There are really two problems to solve: small, trappy space is risky. And a door that only allows a single horse to pass through at once is risky.

Or something like this:

Although I’m really not sure how you’d prevent gaps that could trap a hoof. You’d have to be so tight to the walls and floor.

Or, build an entirely separate run in structure that’s not attached to the barn.

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This is a super common set-up, but of course anything can happen. Even long-time pasture mates can have disagreements. IMO, it’s not the size of the stall that makes stall-sharing dangerous, but the size of the exit.
It’s best to make sure the exterior door they’re coming in/out of is large enough for one to escape easily should a scruffle occur. I’d use a 10’ gate at minimum, personally. IDK if your outside wall is 10’ or 14’; if 14’, use a 12’ gate.

I’ve seen the planks dropped in channels on many stalls; it’s a nice feature, but they don’t exactly come apart quickly in the event of an emergency.
You could do two walls that are on hinges, with a good latch to hold them together in the middle when you want the stalls separated.
Or of course one big wall for the whole dividing wall on hinges, need some big-@$$ hinges in that case.

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Let me see if I can describe our quarantine barn, that is used for older horses now.
It is an addition to our old quonset barn, with six 14’ x 14’ stalls and still under roof a 14’ overhang, in a straight line, except we have only formatted three and left for now the other three as a large run-in from the pasture, with equally wide pen in front of them.

Those three have outside runs.
We can open the middle, center wall, wall to the fourth stall, it swings and so have a larger run equivalent to four stalls long.

We have kept in there as a herd up to five geldings that get along without any trouble, mostly three or four.
All our stalls are portable panels, easy to move around, store what we don’t use.
That one middle stall wall hangs from that metal column very solidly, is easy to swing either way and fasten back.

We can close the middle wall and have three stalls with individual runs.
Here is a picture with the middle wall closed but the overhang clear to the end, not closed for individual runs, there were no horses there, we had power washed and were repainting.
The other picture with two horses that were new, so still kept separated:

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I have seen moveable stalls-you create a channel on each wall you can drop heavy boards in-you might have to use a vertical board or two (removeable/use screws) especially, along the length, if 10/12 ft long boards need to be used-to prevent boards from being moved up and creating a gap as noted above that could trap hoof.

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I’m out of money, that last one isn’t an option right now.

I could do your option 2, for now. If I get a 3rd horse I’d be back in the same debacle though, but it would buy me time.

The stall fronts will be 10’ so the outside gap will also be 10’. The side walls are the 14’ers.

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How about forgoing stalls at all for right now, and just leaving the space open as a run in? Finish it once you’ve lived with it for a bit and decide which direction you want to go.

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Love this set up.

I could put gates as the side walls, but won’t use them as the openings to the sacrifice area - I want to be able to button stuff up if needed.

Would it be weird to do permanent 4’ “head walls”, so that the board or panel size becomes more manageable at 10’?

Like this:

I could, I just worry that if I need to lock them up due to a storm or something, it’s riskier to have them in a 14x30 together loose.

My two get along pretty well but I can envision my old man starting something he can’t finish :rofl:

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How do you feel about having a round pen panel available for that scenario, that you could use to separate them?

I think I remember that you intend to have them out as much as possible? Barring terrible weather or whatever? Spending time and $$ to come up with a solution for multiple stalls when you only want to use them very rarely just seems like resources that could be spent elsewhere.

A panel is, what, a couple hundred bucks? And done. You can try out different configs with it, and once things are settled after the move, and you’ve firmed up how the space works for you, you can decide to make it more permanent (or not!)

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I’m game! I just didn’t know if there was a better/easier way. It would be super easy to store them strapped on the far wall.

That’s how I’d go! Even if you build it out with wood later, panels are soooooooo handy to have around, or they sell like hotcakes on the used market, if you really don’t want to hang on to them.

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Finding a 14’ panel will be tricky though, I think. I may need to build out those head walls to get a standard size panel. But that’s ok, easy peasy.

It’s a pretty standard size…

Random Google results:

https://www.behlencountry.com/product/14-medium-duty-corral-panel/

Etc etc…

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I was just about to post the same. 14 foot gates and/or panels are out there. If you did need a head panel, it’s easy to zip-tie on 1/4 inch plywood (we’ve done it when necessary) as a screen.

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