I have large horses 17+. I know they would love to be able to hang their heads out but questions the trouble they might get into if bored. The company my builder uses for stall fronts is Plyco. Would love to hear feedback. Not as many options as Classic Equine but not as $$$ either. I keep going back and forth but need to make a decision. So can ya’ll help a girl out??? They will have dutch doors off the back of theirs stalls. We are doing a metal barn so hopefully they won’t have the urge to eat the metal! TIA
You may get some ideas here:
Yoke. Not yolk. How wide is your aisle? Horse traffic in aisle?
Haha. I missed that I did that! Thanks calvincrowe. Aisle is 14ft and no to traffic. Just my personal barn.
For a personal barn with a wide aisle, I love yokes. My personal dream stall fronts are the euro ones with the doors in the middle and the curved bars that are high on the sides and low in the middle at the door. <3 so much.
If you’re worried about a future or current troublemaker, though, go for solid fronts since you have a dutch door on the back, or get the kind that have a drop-down yoke that can be put back up as needed. But a note of caution - get a kind that latches down, not just hang. I boarded at a barn with ones that just dropped down and hung, weren’t fixed in place when open, and in one summer three horses broke several teeth playing with them, one of the three even broke its jaw. This was at a western barn (I was one of few english riders) who kept their personal and training horses inside 24/7, they never got turned out, so I’m sure were bored as heck.
I love having the option to have heads out.
I had plyco dutch doors in my last barn and they were great. Highly recommend those guys!
I have yokes and dutch windows off the back of each stall. My guys are not stalled all the time—only for a couple hours a day to eat, unless weather dictates otherwise, which is unusual here. The only thing I have issues with is them grabbing halters, blankets, or anything within reach and either throwing them on the floor or dragging them into their stalls.
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I think they are nice. I dont have them at my barn. I have one who gets protective of her stall and another who likes to chew on things. I do have windows out the back that they can hang their heads out though and they like doing that when they are in.
I am building my barn and just finished the stalls this past weekend. It is a 3 stall barn with stalls on one side and a 14’ open space for grooming/tacking, etc. The stalls have dutch doors that open to their dry lot in the back and the stall fronts have a solid bottom swing door and a yoke gate on the inside. I hung the yoke gate so the bottom of the yoke is at about 4.5 feet (my largest horse is only 16.1 so you could go higher). I like the option to let my horses hang their heads out and since it is my personal barn, I know I don’t have any horses that are likely to bite horses walking by or being tacked up. I feel it makes the barn feel more open and feeding is easy because I can leave the bottom doors open and slide their grain under the yoke gate. If you know you have horses that won’t try to jump through the yoke or bite the other horses in the aisle, go for it!
My personal barn has a 12ft aisle and I have yokes, definitely recommend them.
My personal barn has yokes and I would never want to do without them. The horses like the freedom of poking their heads out of their stalls. My horses are also not stalled often. If they were I’d hate to have them even more closed in for any length of time.
Or best of both, have solid doors that have an opening you can keep closed or open.
Just be sure when open it doesn’t hang down where a horse may injure itself playing with it.
Some do, ending up with broken teeth or even jaws.
Being able to close the open top makes sense for some situations, like if you have a horse that may try to jump out the opening, like if it’s buddy leaves, etc.
Current barn I am boarding at all has yoke fronts. One of the 17H+ horses in the barn now has a stall guard across his yoke. He was pulling his blankets off the blanket bar and throwing them in the aisle. He would pull his cooler into his stall. Since he was big he could easily reach them.
A few other horses have the guards too since they squeal and kick the walls. They can reach thru the yoke and touch the neighbor horse thru the feed bin drop.
If you go yokes I would make sure they are the type that you can flip a grid up if a particular horse is a PITA about the yoke.
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One more warning on openings into the aisle.
If you have a horse that is nervous and apt to have OCD behaviors, repetitive motion ones, I think those horses are more apt to start seriously weaving or any other such if they can stand there and do it with the open top than if they stand there in a more closed in stall.
Weaving is hard on horse’s knees.
We don’t want horses to stand there weaving if we can help it, or keep up any other repetitive motion type behaviors.
At the track, a few weavers we knew or had ourselves didn’t weave with the top dutch door closed, but would with it open, even with a hay bag to eat from.
Boarding facility where I am has both open fronts of the rectangle variety as well as back windows. My horse has bars up as he will get after horses in the cross ties. I will say that a number of the other horses spend indoor time grabbing halters, chewing on tack, pulling sheets off rack etc. Mostly funny to me, as its not my stuff!
For personal barn perhaps you can better figure out a way to keep halters/leads etc nearby but out of reach.
My barn has yoke fronts, but I’ve closed them up since I’ve now had two different horses who decided to pound on their stall doors at 3 in the morning! They can’t do it if they can’t hang their heads out. These horses have open back doors out to their 40 foot runs, with those runs always open to the adjacent field…and they still decided it would be great to come into their stalls and ask for a midnight snack!
My barn aisle is 16 feet wide so not an issue of them bugging a horse in the aisle.
Mine has yoke fronts with a pop-in/ pop-out panel so that if someone gets extra-special excited, they can safely be closed all the way in, yet there isn’t anything hanging down in the way. I was fortunate enough to have a welder who used to work for Lucas Equine Equipment, so got that kind of quality at a fraction of the price. 
I had stall yokes and didn’t like them. The horses liked looking out their windows more anyways. They would stand with their heads out at feeding time, banging on the door, and then wouldn’t pull their heads back in when I came with dinner so I would have to push their faces in because if I didn’t and opened the door they would ‘trap’ their heads…
These are the things you don’t think about when you build a barn, but irritate you after it’s built
