And be careful about storing meds, such as bute and banamine. Check the temp range for all. Many people keep these meds at the barn, either too hot or too cold. I take mine into the house every day.
3 Likes
Also, for fire extinguishers, consider something like this so you don’t have to worry about replacing them very often:
And Elastikon. There are some locations where I find it much easier to secure a bandage using Elastikon rather than vet wrap. I like the 2" width. I’ve been wrapping a pastern/fetlock recently and it’s nice to have the more narrow tape for an area like that.
1 Like
Your Pony Club Rally handbooks used to have lists for the Team First Aid kits that were quite comprehensive. I put the small items in labeled plastic (Gladware or other cheap brand) boxes to keep them neat, organized and CLEAN as someone riffled thru the main box during an emergency! Saw one kid drop and spill out all the contents, racing to the injured horse. Boxes kept everything usable, not soaked in mud. The little containers are all put into a Rubbermaid tub with First Aid label on the side and one end to be visible. Keeps things together, easily moved to where you work on the horse.
Plan to keep the aisle free of storage. No trunks, no hanging blankets, no halter hooks sticking into the space for loose horse or work equipment (tractor, wheelbarrows, hose) to get hung up on. Secure stall and feed room door latches. No horses escaping, letting friends out, no getting into grain storage to gorge themselves.
One thing we have that few barns put in anymore, are tie/standing stalls. We consider them as important training tools among our other training tools. The use of tie stall teaches a horse or pony MANY things without adding specific “training time” to your days. Self learning by the horse! Among skills gained are standing quietly for long times, not jumping, kicking, acting silly when approached from the rear, even if surprised. No kicking at things passing behind them. Not moving to one side quietly could slow food delivery!! Horse gets touched on both sides daily, soon quits being surprised with body touching all over as the food arrives, bucket is filled with hose dragged by his feet. Getting moved from one side of stall to the other daily makes horse obedient to commands to get over for you to back him out of stall, heading off for turnout. Again, this learning takes NO EXTRA time, just part of the daily routine.
A feature of tie stalls is they use a lot less bedding, no stall walking, so no sorting ALL the bedding to find the clean stuff. Economical to bed, needing much less than a box stall but still deep bedding. Stalls clean out to the floor very fast, so horse is on clean bedding every day which can be deep and warm. No rub marks on my horses from thin bedding. Being slightly constricted with walls seems to help with trailer loading, just another tie stall that is smaller! Our horses lay down in their tie stalls, no problems going down or getting up. Never had a horse get cast in a tie stall either.
1 Like
What are the dimensions of your tie stalls and how long do the horses stay in them? Are they in addition to, or instead of, standard stalls? I am really not familiar with them in practice at all.
We have large horses, 16-17h, so stalls are 5 1/2ft or 6ft wide by 12ft long. There is a corner hay Manger in front, with a corner feed manger under it. Bucket in the other front corner. Tie rope is centered between the corners. Floors are boards.
We have slightly smaller tie stalls in the other barn for use with smaller/young horses, so they can’t get halfway turned around in the bigger, wider tie stalls. They are 4 1/2ft and 5ft wide x 12ft long. Barn is an irregular size, so stalls were made in 2 sizes as were the bigger stalls. The horses also lay down easily in the smaller stalls. We keep or kept 14h to 16h horses in them, before they widened out in maturity.
Tie stalls are not common anymore except among draft folks and Amish. We used tie stalls as kids, saw the benefits to the horses and ourselves, so we added them when we set up horse-keeping at our farm. We have two 12ft x 12ft box stalls used for the old retirees or a broodmare and foal when we have one. Young and working horses are in the tie stalls about half a day. Longer turnout in summer, longer stall time in winter, but approximately 10 hours stalled daily. They go out daily unless there is sleet or sheet ice. It sure saves us a lot on time and bedding expense using the tie stalls!
1 Like
Interesting! Do you see any stall vices develop in tie vs box stalls? It sounds like the key is abundant turnout.
No bad habits beyond some pawing when it is feed time or turnout time. Abundant turnout is helpful! We do have some antique stall grills between the tie stalls, which allow horses to touch, but not play tag over the wall. One mare got VERY crabby with gelding neighbor playing “touched you last!” You could actually see her smile when the grills went up! Ha ha Space between heads on back to shoulder, is solid boards to prevent face-making or threats while eating. Everyone gets peaceful eating time.
Elasticon and napalm ( Raplast). When you need it you need it and you don’t want to have to order it and wait days for delivery. Vetwrap and Bitter Yuck just don’t cut it when you need to keep something wrapped and TSC doesn’t carry either of these. Also pink duct tape to wrap stuff you don’t want to lose - i.e. scissors, hoofpicks.
Put EVERYTHING heavy on rollers. Super easy to make - a few 2x4s and plywood and wheels. So much easer to move the grain, the tack trunk, the tool table, I even make a one with a heavy duty pallet so I can move hay around.
Everyone has covered the vet/horse side but you need to think about barn/facility maintenance too.
Make a tool table so it looks like a potting/garden table - or but a sturdy flee market tall dresser. Put a power strip on it so that you can always have a charge on a screw driver, a saw, a weed eater and leaf blower. Have drawers for screw drivers, drill bits, hammers, nails/screws, zip ties, paint brushes, whatever barn (and jump) maintenance items you need. Use a separate large grooming box for all your fence maintenance and repair items so you can lug it to the loose board or sagging gate.
And in case no one has told you - you will spend more time on sweeping, mowing, painting, raking and facility cleaning, maintenance and repair then you will EVER spend with your horse.
Also ditch buckets as much as possible - they break too much and are a maintenance PITA, save them for shows. Use a 150 gal water tank in the run for water - easy to heat in winter and only have to fill once a week and heavy rubber tubs (with bricks as required,) for grain.
4 Likes
I second a previous comment about setting up hoses with snap connectors. They make it so much faster to move hoses and you only have to attach them properly the first time to make sure you never have a leak.
I also keep a bag of zip-ties in my barn. They are more useful to me than duct tape. They are weight-rated so I use the smaller ones when I want a safety break-away and larger ones when I want more resistance.
2 Likes
Things I use in abundance in a hospital setting that are a good idea to have at home…
-Flunixin (paste and injectable)
-Sedation (Ace, dorm gel, etc.)
-Acetaminophen
-Bandage materials (elastikon, vetwrap, rolled cotton, brown gauze, gauze 4x4s, etc.)
-Neopolybac opthalmic
-Sterile eyewash solution
-SSD (silver sulfadiazine)
-DMSO gel
Become familiar with routes of administration and proper storage (some drugs are light or temperature sensitive etc.) and (obviously) consult with a vet before use.
My biggest piece of advice would be to become familiar with your horse’s baseline vitals. Temp, heart rate, resp rate, feeling for digital pulses/heat in legs and feet, mucous membrane color. You don’t need to be neurotic about it by any means, but an early indication of sickness can be variations in basic vitals. It is super helpful to have that info when calling your vet initially as well!
So exciting, have fun!!
5 Likes
Great first post, welcome to COTH.
4 Likes
Thank you, happy to be here!
2 Likes
Thanks for the credit @beowulf! Your list of must haves is amazing and so thoughtful.
I’d add one small thing: some diluted “no more tears” baby shampoo is great for washing around wounds, and it won’t sting if it gets in the wound. Don’t ask me how I know.
Something structural I’ll mention: keep your eyes open for some home undergoing a kitchen renovation. Great place to pick up counters and cabinets, even sinks for your barn and all for free!
5 Likes
This is genius.
1 Like
It has been mentioned but want to repeat it. Fire extinguishers in locations that are easily accessible in an emergency. That means you will likely need more than one. Also have one by the door in the house that you are most likely to run out if something is going wrong in the barn.
Make sure your outdoor extinguishers are designed for outdoor storage.
I do this. It makes daily life so much easier. Make a mess once per week, so only have that clean-up that day and every feeding is just grab a hay bag.
I personally think eye injuries are always an emergency and my vet has made it very clear to never put any eye meds in an eye that has not first been looked at. I keep saline for rinsing but no other eye meds on hand.
Moon Boots. Far superior than tape for the bottom of hoof wraps. Everyone should get some to have on hand.
I feel like most of the “things” have been covered - just have to throw in my favorite pitchfork, the fine tine fork, as it was life changing for me. Instead, my focus is on how to make life easier for you and whoever else will do the care. I assume you have a non horsey job that will take up at least 8 hrs/ day during the week (if you have no commute, if you do commute then more than that) which makes the horse care a bit more of a balancing act than if the barn is your workplace. Things that have made my life easier when doing horse care (either now at home, or at previous boarding situations)
- round bale feeder in pasture/ paddock means only putting out hay every 4-6 weeks for my 2 horses and means it isn’t going to waste. We were using a hay cradle and DIY roof but new bales are too big so are going to pick up a hay hut or similar
- made DIY square bale slow feeders for the stalls. If they are stalled 24/7 (weather or injury) it takes a little over 2 days for them to finish one bale. I store my hay and shavings in a separate barn, but fill up the stall feeders each week/ as needed and will bring 2 spare bales into the main barn if the weather will be bad so I don’t have to trek back and forth in bad weather.
- currently use a big 100 gal? Water trough and really don’t like it. With our hot summers, even with cleaning it weekly and adding ACV it needs cleaned closer to every 2-3 days. We’re looking into getting auto waterers instead. If we go that route we will place them so that multiple turnouts can share 1.
- when they first came home I bought bagged shavings or pellets because I didn’t want to use the “extra” barn to store shavings as we had tools in there. Well my horse had surgery and I wasn’t trying to pay $250+ every other week at TSC for shavings only. We moved everything and use bill sawdust ($250 for roughly 4 months of DEEP bedding for 2 horses). This is region dependent but moral is just get the bulk option!
- at a barn I used to board at, when we did stalls they would get the tractor out and use it to get a scoop of shavings in the bucket then dump it into two Rubbermaid wheelbarrows that were pushed together. It was SUCH a time saver and so much better than shoveling. Currently working on getting a second Rubbermaid wheelbarrow so we can do this at home
- last one is using a side by side/ mule/ golf cart/ four wheeler either with its own dump bed or with a dump cart to pick stalls into and then dump. Depending on your layout, the manure pile may be (should be) a good distance from the barn and dragging a wheelbarrow back and forth sucks. This also saves time.
Stuff I can’t live without (in addition to what has been written above).
Three kinds of tape: duct, masking and blue painter’s.
Bucket hangers (the kind that are a hook with a fixed ring above). We use these for paddock gates. We use a chain that is long enough to go 3/4 of the way around the post on the closing side, attach the bucket hanger on the side away from the horse, and use it to hook the chain and keep the gate shut. If a horse pushes on the gate, the post takes the pressure. And these never freeze up in the winter. NB: there are lots of people who feel strongly that this isn’t a good solution, but it has worked for me for years.
If you can find it, a self draining hose is brilliant. Here is a link to one, but it’s not currently available: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B00JKVCG0Cpsc=1&ref=ppx_pop_dt_b_product_details.
Using this hose, I can easily pick up 150 feet in one hand. It’s a game changer for me when hoses have to be moved about or brought into a warm space in the dead of winter.
An auxiliary brain: that’s what we call the barn master calendar. It’s a 12x24 or so monthly calendar with space to write. It notes appointments (vet, farrier, other), vaccinations, Coggins, feed, hay and bedding usage, fecal egg counts and deworming, any repairs or issues. At this point, I have about 10 year’s worth, and it can be really interesting and informative to look back and see how usage has changed and it helps me budget.
A barn cat or two. Obviously! And they’ll need a safe place to hang out if there are coyote or fox in your area.
1 Like
