Find the cheapest, ugliest, least athletic animal. It’s also usually about 12 hands tall. That horse will live to be 45, never injure itself and never be lame.
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I’d love to see a picture of this if you find it!
BLM has this setUp at some of their facilities for the mustangs. Their alfalfa feeder hay bins are nothing more than a frame with pond liner. They have roundbales free choice under the roof. Here are some photos of the Ewing IL facility. There are often around 300+ horses there.
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i have a lot of horses who live large in two separate herds. I feed them alfalfa out in their pastures and they can pick little leafbits out of the grass for quite a few hours after they’re done eating. Maybe some is wasted, but not very much. They graze all day long unless it’s summer, then they hide in the dark barn in front of the fans because of horseflies. In the Fall/Spring or Winter they’re out all night and all day unless the weather is crummy, in which case the come down to the barn where i have roundbales under roof year round for them. They have sort of a grazing rotation…that takes them across about three fields and across a couple of creeks. When i call them they come. WHen we expect an icestorm or sleet i get them in, put blankets on them and lock them in the corral with barn attached.
That type of barn is used all over Europe for youngstock.
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The dairy barn/stanchion style feeder doesn’t really appeal to me because I have suicidal horses….
BUT…
I would love a big, mostly enclosed, social indoor space as opposed to small turnout sheds or stalls.
We had that growing up and I think the horses greatly appreciated it.
If money were no object, I think I would build a 10 stall barn with a center aisle and Dutch doors on the outside, but on one side of the aisle it would be no stall partitions. The horses could have the entire 12x60 length as mostly enclosed shelter they could access as they please. The other side would still have traditional stalls to use as needed, and you could just walk horses across the aisle at feeding time.
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The bars are actually safer as it allows a horse that’s eating to keep an eye on other horses that may be approaching from the back and side.
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Horses can see to the sides, not really right behind them:
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I know, so if a horse came up directly behind, they’d miss it. But from behind at a slight angle they can see the approaching horse through the bars and have enough time to move if needed.
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I have custom made hay racks in my fields. You could raise the center aisle and then drop hay down into the racks. My racks have the same idea behind them – no need to go into field (barn) to get hay to the horses. I really like the Madden’s set up.
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I’ve not seen too many cattle get through head gates! Where they will get themselves into trouble in a free stall housing barn is in the bedding stall area. Typically, it’s a cow that’s got something wrong with her (metabolic issues, etc.) and can’t get up easily. She will then attempt to lunge and lunge and lunge until she manages to get her front half out the front of the stall where she ends up stuck under the brisket bar until somebody comes along to rescue her. It’s also an issue in tie stall barns where the cows eat in the same stalls they lie in. Tie stall barns have only a brisket bar so a cow who has difficulty rising will end up in the feed alley.
The head gates in your picture are not a lying area*, so typically they don’t manage to get themselves into trouble there.
@kaya842 this type of barn style is called “loose housing.” You’ll see it a lot for broodmare herds in Europe - some in NA, but certainly not as many as in Europe. They are also typically maintained with pack bedding - bedding is added regularly and then when the pack reaches a certain height, it is removed with equipment (loader tractor, skidsteer, etc.) rather than wheelbarrow.
*The part the cows are standing on is typically concrete, sometimes mats, but not mattresses, no bedding. It is not conducive to hanging around in except to eat. When they want to lie down, they go to free stalls that are cushioned and bedded and comfortable.
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That is what I want eventually for my horses! Working towards it!
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Here’s mine. She escaped and ran around a construction site, once ate an entire container of plastic wrapped mints and a substantial amount of grain, broke into the area with the tractors and ran over the top of the chain drag. And has never injured herself, colicked, anything. Compared to my APHA gelding who injures himself when someone looks at him wrong.
Picking pieces of plastic out of her manure was a fun few days.
Oh, and did I mention she steals tack and chews on it? Because she does that.
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Is the eyes, that gives her away. 
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I tore this picture out of a magazine decades ago for my “ideas” folder and still like the idea. With a hay loft above where you can drop hay straight down into the racks. It’s safer for the horses, plus you can get the entire floor cleaned easily with a tractor.
I think this was from a Trakehner breeding farm in France, but may not be remembering correctly all these years later.
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That is the way many breeding farms keep broodmares and young horses, especially common in the German barns I knew.
Riding horses generally used to go to riding centers with box and standing stalls.
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The one shown in the OP’s original post is like the ones I saw in Germany at many breeding/young horse operations. It worked great - the horses could feed “together” as if loose in a field, yet each one could still have its own little space. And I never saw any instances of fighting - there were always more slots than horses, so every horse could find a place where it could eat undisturbed. And they didn’t seem at all concerned about being approached from behind, because the other horses were more intent on finding an empty slot than on approaching the backside of another horse.
It was pretty easy to throw the hay out from a tractor/wagon, and was also easy to clean up. And it significantly reduced waste because the horses weren’t strewing hay throughout their bedding where it would inevitably get mixed with manure.
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Bumping this back up because I just saw this month old video of Madden Mountain. It appears they installed dividers at their hay feeder to make standing stalls. I am curious why.
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Because nobody bites anyone else in the face because their hay looks better. It looks pretty much like a dairy barn actually.
