We still have our trunks and trunks of Baker Blankets (a few can collect Social Security as they are from the 1950s) …every once in awhile we do need to blanket the poor non winter coated sissy horses who can not believe the temperature is in the low teens and and there ICE on my water bucket …the ones from North Dakota you can see telling all the others This ain’t Nothing as they prance about …Let me Tell You about how it was in the wild west :lol:
really becomes comical
Check with your insurance before you get too involved in storing hay in a loft.
Re: stall sizes. My last farm had 10’x12’ stalls, my current farm has 10’x10’ stalls. While everyone is “fine” with 10x10, I sure notice the missing 2ft! I feel like 10x12 is a good compromise size.
Whatever you decide, I would make sure you have at least one stall for emergency purposes. Something that a horse can be thrown in immediately without labor-intensive prep work. Hopefully it will never happen, but you may find yourself in a situation where a horse needs to be confined NOW, and you don’t want to be having to set corral panels or move 40 bales of hay out of a stall in that moment.
I’ve had my 17hh, 16.3hh, and 16.2hh (81, 84, and 84 blankets respectively) thoroughbreds in 10’x10’ stalls before at boarding barns and they did just fine. But 10’x12’ is better, yes.
Do you need some of the barn for other stuff, or is the entire 22’x80’ reserved for the horses?
If you can, IDK how your doors/access is set up and all that, but you could actually do two 10’x16’ stalls and a 10’x16’ tack/feed room. That leaves 22’x32’ as a run-in, which you could easily make two more temporary stalls in if/when needed. Assuming leaving it as a run-in still gives it the opportunity to be completely closed up, you could just stall the one or two trouble makers and close up the one or two remaining in the 22’x32’ area.
Or, if you can only use exactly half of it, maybe two 10’x16’ stalls and a 8’x22’ feed/tack room on the end.
Frost-free hydrants should be inside your barn.
I solved a similar problem by building stalls with sliding doors between them rather than open at the front. So 3 stalls in a row and I keep them all open and it’s a run in shelter 99% of the time. But I do love having stalls when I need them. I also love having only 3 stalls because it means I will never have more than 3 horses so the work doesn’t get to be too much.
I’ve spent 61 years in central Wisconsin, and it’s really not that bad. 
I have five horses, two Arabians and three OTTBs. All of them live out 24/7. They have loafing sheds 16 feet deep so they can get out of the wind if they want. I have four frost free hydrants, all outside in the wide open and never have a problem, and I have both Nelson and Bar-Bar A automatic waterers, also out in the open and they work fine. While I do have stalls, they are rarely used and the horses much prefer living out. One Arab tends to never grow much coat so he gets a blanket, but the others do very well without. If need be, everybody can be blanketed, but that rarely happens.
There is no colder place for a horse to be in cold weather than locked into a stall. Horses stay warm in cold weather by running around together, playing together, moving. Removing the option to be able to do this leads to impaction colic, and hoof circulation problems. To avoid this, make sure that your horses can move around at will, and have the company of other horses.
I’d go with the run in communal option. With one 10 X 10 stall, that opens onto the run in shed, to be used “double duty” as both a grooming stall, AND in case you have a horse to needs to be separated due to illness or injury, or other issue- just remove the crossties and grooming tools, and you have a recovery stall. So I’d put a heated auto waterer that serves both the stall and the communal shed on the wall that separates the two.
Thanks for all the additional great input! So we decided to leave the end of the barn open as a run in, but we added doors to be able to close them up when needed when the weather is bad. We will put in two 12x10 stalls and still have room for hay storage and a tack/feed room at the other end. There will still be enough room to park the tractor and ATV in the aisle on that side, as well.
This configuration will allow us to stall 2 horses when needed, and close up the run-in side to house an additional horse (or two). I can also use a stall for a grooming area and still have a stall open at all times for emergency use.
We will also put the hydrants on the inside of the barn. We have goats now as a trial-run for our set-up before we get horses and being inside out of the cold wind is so much nicer when doing chores like feeding and watering. I don’t want to have to sit out in the wind while waiting for water buckets to fill anymore.
Hoping we will be able to get all this done this spring. Covid kind of threw a monkey wrench into our building plans.
Looks like you have a great plan. Very exciting! A word of caution about closing up the two horses in one area. My friend had two best friend mares that she stalled together for years. One day one of the mares kicked the other, causing fatal internal bleeding - very sad. Maybe you can buy a panel set up or hang a gate that you can use to separate the horses if they need to be closed in.
This thread has been great. We live in the 115 degree heat and miss the cold. The advice about making sure the water is flowing is really good advice.
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