Thanks for sharing! Is this a stopper piece?
Also, do you have mats all through your aisle? How is that to work on? Does it get damp / slippery? I’ve not worked in a barn with a matted aisle?
Horses do manage to get hurt on so many things. We just have to be diligent as we can I guess.
Yes that picture with the horse half out of the stall is something I’d like to avoid.
It’s a door stop. It holds the jam (opening) side of the sliding door.
You’ve never been in a barn with a matted aisle? Wow! Every nice barn I’ve ever toured has mats or pavers.
You would think they couldn’t get a foot under a sliding door with 1/4" clearance, but many doors, the way they hang, can be lifted as there can be wiggle room at the top where the sliding mechanism is. (In addition to not having proper stops to keep them from being pushed out.) Unfortunately many people don’t keep them as well maintained as they should and the injury can be brutal. But yeah, a well designed, properly installed, well maintained sliding door is likely fine. For my situation in trying to maximize airflow, openness and safety in a private barn–where I don’t have boarders and don’t have to tolerate crazy if I don’t want to–I’ve found inward swinging mesh doors to be a great solution. A rectangular mesh without the V is available, but in mine the V in the door is low enough for them to check out who’s coming and going but high enough that it doesn’t really let them have their heads out and their chest against the door.
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I mean, horses will find a way to hurt themselves no matter what, so IMO no one’s story of injury or issue is a flat out reason to NOT use a stall type if you really like it. Just find ways to make it as safe as possible.
If I ever get to build my dream barn, it’ll be the Euro front I included a pic of above, 54” or 60” tall in the middle, and an 18’ aisle with stalls on only one side. So walking a horse through with heads hanging out really won’t be a huge concern. I also don’t agree with stalling for 12+ hours per day for human convenience, so I don’t expect my horses to be inside all the time to have to worry about knocking knees, pawing the door, and leaning on the door. I’d have at least one full front in case of needing stall rest, or I wind up with a horse that would try to jump out when in for 30 mins for grain but, I probably wouldn’t even use it daily, I’d just feed that horse outside.
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I’ve seen several, but I’ve not worked in any. Even the barn we ran out of when I groomed In Wellington one winter had concrete.
So that’s why I asked how it was to work on.
Isn’t that the truth!
My current boarding barn has stall fronts similar to the European style. I suppose they are about 5’ tall. They are straight across the tops, not curved. The BO is fairly particular about horses she takes. I’ve not heard of any issues at this facility, but it is inhabited by mostly placid middle aged riding horses. We do have some horses that fling everything to the ground and several reach out and take a bite if one isn’t careful. My horse is stalled where he and his neighbors can touch around the fronts. They seem to like that. There are other blocks of stalls where boards have been added to prevent horses from that easy access to one another (for those less polite individuals).
This little barn I’m setting up will have runs off the back of the stalls. I don’t have the acreage for 24/7 grass turnout year round. I’m hoping the extra room in the runs will mitigate some of negative impacts of stalling while retaining a bit of the convenience for me.
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It’s generally far preferred to concrete. Softer and less slippery.
I’m sure you can find people out there that would rather have concrete, though. Isn’t that the way the horse world goes? Two people, three opinions? 
I am redoing my barn hopefully in the next 6 months or so. I will be installing stall fronts with a center swinging Dutch door. The plan is to keep the tops open except when there’s a need to close them, like havinga horse in the aisle.
My horse just moved from a barn with Dutch doors where the tops were kept open and they all did great. The horses were pretty low key though.
Right now I have crappy sliding doors with no way to open the top at all. My foster horse could NOT handle that so I got her a swinging gate with a yoke. She is doing great with it. She also requires my mare not to be closed in, so my mare stays in just behind a stall guard (the Kensington style). Luckily she is very easygoing about it!
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That’s interesting! I would presume the rubber pavers to be nicely grippy, but wasn’t sure about mats in an aisle.
Any issues driving small farm equipment over the mats?
Locally, mats over compacted screenings would be considerably cheaper than concrete. Presuming the use of the stall mats available here at TSC.
Thanks for the info!
Nope.
My mats now are over concrete, but my last barn was over screenings. A turning skid steer will move the mats in both aisles, and tear up the screenings, even compacted. But that’s a pretty tough ask. It’ll do fine with your standard “pulling the tractor straight through” kind of traffic. The better you prep your base, the happier you’ll be with it! (Goes for your stalls, too.)
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It would mostly be golf cart traffic, so sounds like a non issue for daily use.
Thanks for the tip re base prep!
I’d love to have concrete everywhere, maybe in the future
Me tooooooooo. Prepping screenings for mats sucks 
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One of my favorite barn setups has not just a feed door, but the whole corner of the stall front containing a feed bowl and hay rack swings outward. It can be latched into either position. You can go down the aisle and feed without ever having to enter a stall. If you are going away for the day and need someone else to feed, you can have them turned into the aisle and already prepped and the person need only turn them around.
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