I’ve been using my trailer as my tacking up area, tack storage and grain storage. I have 6 boxes of horse stuff in the house that I need a spot for.
We have lots of barn builders and kit/pole barns around here but our horses live outside 24/7… so I’m on the fence about spending the money to have stalls. The kit barn I’m looking at is 5 12x12 stalls with 1 12x12 tack room.
There’s also lots of run in sheds/shelters with a smaller attached tack room, the run in part never looks tall enough for me.
I could get one of those garden sheds but if I’m spending that much money I might as well spent more and get a barn.
Also interested in seeing everyone’s hitching posts? Problem is I have a cribber… he actually broke my gate yesterday to the front pasture (it was looking great and I wanted to keep horses off of it!)
Having a place to work out of the weather any time of the year for you, your farrier, your vet and for storage is priceless.
Now, as you know well, having stalls for horses is an added luxury that you may never need.
Especially if your out of the weather place can have a spot to make a stall out of it if you ever need a stall.
Give building an all purpose structure a serious thought.
If you go that route, make it so it can be all you or someone else later can use, for barn, garage, storage, shop, whatever.
That makes building a 5 stall barn pretty useless for me in all reality… and a plain old shed for tack doesn’t help with a covered area for grooming farrier/vet.
I guess just a big lean to with a fully enclosed tack area? We live where it snows so I’m not sure how snow drifting would effect an open building like that.
Theres already a huge shop on the property that is packed full of junk. House is right in the middle of everything. I’d had to put this in the front pasture… or clear out more junk around the main shop… which has dog kennels built into it.
DH is handy as far as building stuff goes, just finding time to use him is difficult. It’s his and his dads land so it has to be okayed through the both of them which is difficult.
Im thinking about throwing up a hitching post close to the main gate, I don’t really have a safe place to tie horses to besides the trailer. Which is a pain. Especially trying to catch them all on 20 open acres.
I really want to make a dry lot in the front so when everything is melting I can lock them off so they don’t destroy the nice part of the pasture. These are the same horses that broke through nice Hotwire within 20 minutes of installing it… same horses that broke the nice gate from the back/front pasture. I’m thankful that I don’t gave to board them anymore 😂
Working with portable panels could work well in such situations.
Those can be moved around as needed, wherever you want them next.
They don’t even have to enclose a square or round spot, just whatever configuration works in any one space.
Horses are not as apt to get thru those panels.
Can’t quite figure what you have there, but I bet you will find a way to make something or other work, eventually.
My favourate and most workable plan involves a building divided into four “quadrants”. Central wall down the length of the barn. One quadrant is an open shelter for horses to live together, open to pasture or paddock. One quadrant next to that is a stall/grooming stall with crossties. Stall door opens to communal shelter next to it. So you can lead the horse you are going to groom or tack up into it, can close the others out. Exit door from this stall to outside, so you can leave the building with your tacked up horse ready to ride. You can also use this as a “stall” in case you have to isolate a sick or injured horse from the others, and use for vet work. Electrical outlet (not able to be accessed by horse), and light. From the central wall on that stall, another access door, into the tack room, for access to your equipment. Heated tackroom. The fourth quadrant is hay storage, with access to trucks to unload hay into the storage area. Access from hay storage to the communal horse shelter area, the first quadrant, so that you can deliver feed to your horses. So all four quadrants have access to each other. Make each quadrant any size you like, to suit your needs. No central aisle like a regular “barn”, central aisle wastes space under the roof. Not necessary.
I have similar structures to this here, and it works well for us.
If you know the direction you get most of your snow and wind, you should be able to build an open structure that isn’t prone to drifting snow. If that isn’t possible, you could put snow fence in front of the open building to stop the drift, or use the strips of curtain material to block the blowing snow, but still allow freedom on movement from the horses.
Nancy M has a nice idea of a structure that could be built pretty simply, but provide you with all you need.
If you live somewhere that it snows then having a place to get a horse in for vet or farrier care during the crappy weather season seems like step one in deciding what you want. Five stalls might be too many for what you want. Can you change that to be a big run in and one stall? Or a big run in, a grooming (farrier/vet) area and a stall?
I do not have any photos of my hitching post. It is just two vertical wood posts with a horizontal wood piece connecting the two.
I’ll to take some photos. There’s an older sheep barn that DH wants to expand basically, to make a big run in shed like walkinthewalk has, and get new fence panels for it.
We do have horrible snow drifts out there but where this building is situated, the house and shop block most of the drifting.
The back side of the shop use to be hound kennels, really just t posts with cattle panels. I think I’m going to rip it out, and fill in the holes with gravel then lay down rubber mats. Basically going to make my own cross ties and grooming area. With the ability to stick horses in the sheep pen.
Im hesitate to put in anything else because in the long run we will have different property. Just like I reallllyyyyyy want do set up a permanent outdoor arena but DH doesn’t want me ‘wasting’ pasture space.
