Open barred window between stalls: Yay or nay?

[Quelah]

[QUOTE=Bluey;8695813]
I talked to MBbarnmasters last fall and they said that most trainers today were preferring the walls between stalls to be 4’ solid bottoms and 1/3 in the front, by the feed door and the upper 2/3 of that wall, bars, for horses to see each other and airflow.

One or two stalls completely enclosed for the rare horse that needs it maybe, but most they were building today had those kinds of walls and the report was everyone was very happy with those.

I think that front 1/3 to be a whole wall by the feed does give the cranky or shy horses peace that someone is not looking at them eating, while they still can step over to the other 2/3 and see the horses are still there.

Here is a picture:[/QUOTE]

A lot of people like that configuration because it’s the cheapest Please don’t think sales reps from barn companies are necessarily knowledgable horsemen. They’re not. There are a lot of horses cooking in dark roofed barns without adequate ventilation in California that would testify to my opinion. Rooflines and clerestories matter a lot more than the walls between stalls for ventilation. My barn has solid walls and it airs tons better than the million (really) dollar barn down the road. Why? I have a huge clerestory, they don’t have one but each stall has a window. Does nothing for air circulation.

[Bluey]

When we first built our stalls, they had runs to the outside and solid walls between the stalls.
Every new horse would take a bite, run out anxiously and stand there trying to peek into the other stalls to see if the other horses were still there.

We remodeled opening the top half of the walls, where horses could see just by lifting their heads that others were there too eating calmly and have not had any such problems since.

In general, other than cranky, unsociable ones, many horses like to be able to see other horses around them, in stalls or runs or pens.

If some don’t, yes, you want to isolate them, no sense in them getting hurt kicking at walls.
Most horses don’t and are happy with some interaction, if only the visual kind.

I would say, a good reason of the partial full and partial open wall is that a horse can stand in either side, looking at others when it wants, behind the solid wall when it wants some peace.

Maybe make the middle between stalls a barred window with a sliding, solid cover, so it can be left open for the friendly horses, slid shut for the ones that prefer isolation?

I really don’t like horses sticking heads out of stalls, as some have been known to try to jump out, as in the picture below, found on the internet along with the others of partial openings on walls between stalls: