Some horses do really good sharing spaces. Some horses really don’t. With my current two, I’d bet money my oldster wouldn’t even try to go into a confined space with my younger bossier horse. I’m not about to put him that position.
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Well, I guess. I stall my horses while feeding grain, but that’s an hour. I wouldn’t stall them all day
or night because they ate different grain - I think there is a much bigger disadvantages of having them in a stall for 8+ hours at a time.
But that assumes that they would have appropriate shelter elsewhere.
If I had a community shelter that only one horse could use, I might put up another shelter. Hard to know because of dynamics, but in general I would horses that are turned out to be able to get out of the rain or sun, whenever they wanted.
Another vote of it depends.
When my horses live at my parents farm my mom manages their turnout to protect the footing, keep them out as much as possible, give each horse the appropriate diet, as well as bringing them in when the bugs are bad.
This time of year they would pretty much be out 24/7. In for a nap and a snack if the bugs get really bad.
Her pasture can get really wet, so during early spring and fall they may have to spend most of their time in the drylot/sacrifice paddock.
During the winter they’re out 24/7, other then coming in to eat.
The last couple years we’ve had them all boarded at my trainers. One lives out 24/7, the other two are stalled some of the time for convenience.
My large dry lot has shelter and I never stall any of my horses. Since none of mine would benefit from eating pasture 24/7 ( right now) they must be dry lotted overnight. Never would I confine a horse that has no access to shelter.
If you can’t do shelter in a dry lot and your horses can handle 24/7 pasture I would choose that over stall confinement.
Well, you could also have horses with vastly different hay needs, in which case you’d need to separate them for longer than the time needed to eat a grain meal. Whether you accomplish that by stalling or separate paddocks would depend on your setup and preferences.
For example, last year I had a hard keeper who was also low on the totem pole, and I had to stall all three horses part of the time to separate them, or he wouldn’t get enough hay. (My stalls have runs so nobody was literally locked in a stall though.) Same thing if somebody needs alfalfa and another one doesn’t or is allergic or whatever.
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Or a juicy pony that needs his hay really restricted and his herd mates don’t!
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If conditions are perfect–plenty of pasture, shelter available, good size dry lot–I would prefer to leave horses out 24/7. Horses like being out and it’s less work for me. That said, my horses are stalled at night. They are both easy keepers that gain weight just from smelling grass, and I have way, way, way too much grass. I can’t even keep a dry lot big enough for them to move around in because the grass grows too fast. The best I can do is turn them out dawn to dusk in their grazing muzzles, put them in a small dry lot for 3-4 hours during the day to take a break from the muzzles, then stall them at night to get them off the grass. They like their 14x16’ stalls and sleep well in them, but they’re always ready to go out again in the morning. Like others have said, the best horse keeping practice is whatever is best for your horses and your conditions.
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It’s not that I don’t understand a variety of reasons why horses should be separated. It’s that the “being stalled” part isn’t really the benefit. It’s the “being separated” part that is the advantage.
All of these could be accomplished by separating paddocks. I have a stall for every horse but I’d rather have various turnout areas for varying scenarios. Not sure what the OP is dealing with, but if it’s not necessary to stall horses for 8+ hours I wouldn’t.
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Gotcha, I think we’re saying the same thing then. But not everyone has a lot of different ways to separate horses, other than stalls.
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They will eat the same amount of grass if they are on the pasture 24 hrs per day, or 12 hrs per day.
A number of years ago there was a study by MARE (Middleburg Agricultural Research and Extension Center) that showed that the horses will eat the same amount of grass, regardless of the turnout schedule, unless you reduce the turnout time to LESS THAN FOUR HOURS per day.
If they have more than four hours, all that changes is how much time they spend standing around not eating. They spend the same amount of time eating, and they eat the same volume/weight of grass.
If you want to limit the amount of grass they eat, you need to restrict their turnout to something less than 4 hours.
I was looking for that study and could not find it.
Thanks for posting it, is true, our horses would spend so much eating and then mostly resting when out to pasture, the same time grazing, the rest of the resting time out to pasture or if shut in.
A trainer friend has for decades now a set of pens where horses come in to eat in his 14’ x 60’ runs with 14’ x 14’ stalls early morning, stay in there until he gets around to riding them, then he turns them out for the rest of the day and all night.
He said the horses want in to their private places, where they find something to eat and get to rest in peace for some hours.
Has worked well for his horses all this time.
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I can’t find it again either. I had a URL for it, but the link no longer works.
Can’t find it now, but this reflects that theory of horses eating their fill in a short time if turned out only a bit or many hours:
—"Also note that when horses have limited or restricted pasture turnout time, their consumption rate and, therefore, NSC intake during that limited time might actually increase, compared to a horse that grazes continually. In one study researchers determined that horses turned out 24 hours per day had lower peak insulin concentrations than horses turned out for 10 hours at 9 p.m. on the same pasture, likely because the latter group ate the higher NSC more rapidly and in greater quantities. Also, horses turned out continuously had higher (less acidic) overall fecal pH than horses turned out either in the evening (9 p.m.-7 a.m.) or daytime hours (10 a.m.-6 p.m.). "—
well, sometimes a horse has to be stalled, and it should associate the confinement with something nice, even if it is just one carrot and a handful of beetpulp
How you handle it depends on so many factors: Horse management, farm management and - I am surprised nobody has mentioned it - safety issues.
If you have to expect mischief during nighttime hours, keeping the horses in the barn or at least close by might be a necessity.
Like the lot I am eyeballing to lease. It is directly on a really busy road, I don’t think I would feel safe leaving a horse there overnight even though there are houses nearby
(that it is southern exposure, no trees is another story)
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If a horse ate as much in 4 hours as in 24 then horses would stay pleasantly plump on 4 hours on pasture without much additional hay. It doesn’t work that way. I’ve read that horses graze about 17 out of 24 hours. It takes that long to get the equivalent of 20 lbs of hay.
That was the old studies, the newer ones indicate that horses don’t graze near as much as the old ones said they did.
If a horse is turned out 24/7 or 4 hours a day, it will still graze the same amount.
The less time on grazing just means less time loafing around in the pastures.
At least that is what more careful studies were showing lately.
Horses on restricted diets need to be muzzled or not out on grazing very long.
I tend to believe the newer studies because our horses have been for decades on 24/7 turnout and they spend more time standing there and taking naps than grazing.
If we confined them part of the day, I expect we would see them grazing and standing around less so as to compensate to same grass intake in fewer hours.
These two statements conflict if you ask me.
You say less time does not mean less eating and then you say if you want them to eat less put them out for less time.
Seems that to cut down grazing sufficiently to be less than a horse would normally graze, they recommend not turning them out but a short time or muzzle them?
The figures I remember from that one missing study report was horses average 4 hours a day grazing, if turned out all day or half a day.
It that is correct for any one individual horse, then turning it out on grass less than 4 hours should cut down their grass consumption, but any more than that, most horses will graze their fill in 4 hours, any more time they mosey around or take naps?
How does the horse turned out for 4 hours know that its time chow down like a Hoover vacuum?
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So has anyone seen a horse stay fat on 4 hours pasture and no supplementary hay?
