Floor Options for Horse Stalls?

[ultrarunner]

I've seen just about everything used as flooring material for Horse Stalls... rock, dirt, sand, gravel, cement, wood, pavers and rubber mats.

What are the pros and cons of different stall floors and should they be sloped with a drain or to a drain?

I'm leveling out a hillside pad for a small 2 stall barn with storage for hay and tack. Thinking of incorporating a 4 to 5' high retaining wall along the hillside as part of the back wall...

My nieces are crazy about horses and I'm the only one with city zoning that allows up to 2 horses on my property...

Getting it through the Home Owners association is another thing. All detached accessory buildings are prohibited... the only exception is horse stables for owner's private use.

 

[WantedWolf]

I have been thinking of this recently. I dont like the cost but for 4 or 6 stalls I think I like the cleanliness and comfort of rubber mats.

I was thinking of having wooden hallway and stall floors about 1ft above ground with a drainage system installed below, then perforate the rubber mats or install a drain in each stall. each stall floor would likly lift out for annual deep cleaning and drainage maintence,
anyone do something like that?

 

[Sniggle]

Some of it depends on how often you plan to have your horses in the stalls.

My wifes horses are very seldom locked in their stalls, as the stalls are left open for the horses to come and go as they wish. We left the floor of the stalls the base material for the pole barn (decomposed granite) and after 3 years there level in the stalls is pretty good.

We did put rubber matting down on the center aisle (12' x 24') to both minimize dust and because the horses for some reason started digging there. That has worked well.

One problem with the rubber mats is that underneath them is a great place for mice to set up their home.

 

[tmiller]

ours are just dirt and i wouldn't do it again cause the middle packs too much leaving a huge hole thats needs filled about every other year

--taylor

 

[Rusty]

We have three horses. Our stalls have sawdust over 4' X 6' X 3/4" rubber mats over crushed stone over native clay. This works well for us, but the initial cost of the mats is pricy. We tried sawdust over native clay for stall floors before the mats - didn't like this option. Floors became rutted, uneven, saturated with urine, smelly and hard to clean. The mats work well. Too much urine will leak thru mat joints into clay, so we clean the stalls daily. Mats have been in use tor 11 years with no sign of deterioration. The sawdust does tend to get under some of the joints, especially at the mat corners in the center of the stalls. I lift the mats at the bad joints once/year and remove the packed sawdust and reset corners of those mats. The mats provide good level even footing, insulation during cold weather, and can be used with less sawdust. Caution, some horses may be more prone to colic from sawdust, sand or dust in general. None of our horses have had a problem. The mats used to go on sale at TSC for 10% off. I don't know if they still do. Best wishes!

 

[Lloyd_E]

We have rubber over wood over concrete.

The barn(26.5x30) was poured with future use in mind - workshop etc. So we went with a concrete slab. We built the two stalls 10'x10' with a potential third 10'x10' if needed.
We laid 2"x6" hemlock flooring in stalls and placed rubber over them. There is a center aisle with drains - center aisle has rubber matts as well.

Once a year we lift everything out and clean floor with a light solution of javex and water.
We hose off the wood after we wash the boards as well. Everything gets put back in place for another year.

It usually takes no more than 3-4 hours to do this. We have very little if any urine smell in the barn.

Good luck...


lloyd

 

[zzvyb6]

If the horses are kept mostly in the stalls, then a blue clay floor has antiseptic benefits to prevent thrush in their feet/hoof. (No Hoof, No Horse)
Use sawdust in the far corner away from a hay feeder to make it easy to scoop poop and absorb urine. They will eventually try to dig to China so watch for that. Always let the horses see each other so that they won't feel like escaping or pacing.

Keep the hay away from the stalls because horses give off a lot of moisture. That will cause the first layer of overhead hay to mold.

Keeping the horse out of the barn keeps the Vet out of the barn....

 

[Ken45101]

Years ago we bought rubber mats for the horse stalls. We did two stalls, the rest of the mats are still sitting in a pile outside. We haven't really seen the need. Our floors are just dirt. I haven't had any horses digging.

However, we almost never keep the horses in the stalls unless they are injured or close to foaling (those are the two stalls that we put the mats in).

Ken

 

[tallyho8]

When I built my latest barn, I built up the foundation with a mix of clay and sand and compacted it with my tractor by rolling back and forth over it for a long time. I put a couple inches of pump sand over this and I put a few inches of fresh shavings in the stall about every month.

I put my horses on pasture every morning an hour after feeding and bring them in at dusk for their evening feeding. I clean the stalls when I put them out and the stalls stay in pretty good shape with no smells. I usually add a little sand once a year.

If your horses don't dig, the dirt bottom will get as hard as concrete in a couple of years so it is important to keep a few inches of sand and shavings on top. If your horse digs, you will be wishing you had a concrete floor with a rubber mat and shavings on the top.

Back when we were in a rental barn, we were only able to put the hours out an hour a day and we had to clean the stalls twice a day to keep them nice.

Horses are always happier and healthier if they spend less time in the barn.

 

[Liren]

At previous boarding facilities, the stalls were clay with shavings on top. Horses were kept in half of the day, with the other half being turned out. Over time, the horses wore down ruts in the clay from walking the stall and peeing in the same place over and over. Adding mats helped some, but if the stalls weren't bedded with enough shavings, the urine would seep through the gaps between the mats and puddle under them. Shavings would also work their way in to the gaps and cause bulges. We had to be aware of managing thrush in their hooves, too.

Our barn's stalls have a gravel base with landscaping material then mats then shavings. The stalls have a slight slope from the back to front, as the barn is a shedrow barn. We've also added gravel base to some of the lower stalls so that they sit above the surrounding ground level. This allows any water that may get in to drain out instead of puddling in the stalls. The landscaping material keeps any shavings from getting into the gravel while allowing moisture to pass through into the gravel (unlike a tarp). It also makes it easier to fully strip the stall if needed. It's easy to flip back a mat and the material to even out dips in the gravel as the horses compact it down over time. Cutting the mats to fit tightly does minimize them shifting and allowing shavings to get under them. A utility knife does a good job cutting them.

There are some products out that look like a honeycomb that you lay out and fill with gravel or sand, then top with shavings. A friend is using this and swears by it. Redoing 10 stalls is cost prohibitive for me at this time, especially since I already had all of the mats needed.

I keep my horses in only when it's really nasty weather (20s or below and wet) these days. They're much happier outside after they adjusted to the routine. However, most of my boarders use the stalls for half the day. They all like the stalls the way they're now configured with the extra base gravel and landscaping material.

 

[Lloyd_E]

I should have noted in my previous post - we also add a layer of shavings as well - usually about 4-6 inches.

lloyd

 

[tciller]

About 4 years ago I rebuilt all 8 stalls in my barn. I got tired of dirt or crushed limestone floors as they always wound up uneven. Mats always curled or were moved by the horses. My solution was a product called equiterr. I put down a couple inches of stone then some crushed limestone then the equiterr and filed them with crushed limestone. Yes it was a bit pricey but it's been down now for 4 years with no problems and one of the stalls contains a Percheron. Here's a link to equiterr EquiTerr

I've seen just about everything used as flooring material for Horse Stalls... rock, dirt, sand, gravel, cement, wood, pavers and rubber mats.

What are the pros and cons of different stall floors and should they be sloped with a drain or to a drain?

I'm leveling out a hillside pad for a small 2 stall barn with storage for hay and tack. Thinking of incorporating a 4 to 5' high retaining wall along the hillside as part of the back wall...

My nieces are crazy about horses and I'm the only one with city zoning that allows up to 2 horses on my property...

Getting it through the Home Owners association is another thing. All detached accessory buildings are prohibited... the only exception is horse stables for owner's private use.

 

[tatra805]

Tuning in a little late maybe.

Our stable has concrete flooring. We bed the horses using shavings and straw.

Slight incline for drainage (but never needed this unless when cleaning out the boxes with the power washer).

The big drawback about the clay, dust and drainage floors what i see is that the drainage holds a lot of urine/dilluted manure all the time. It would be different if you would "flush" the box and replace the urine with water daily. but as the only liquid going into the drainage is a new portion of urine i consider this type of flooring a perfect breeding place for the bad stuff.

A lot of horses are kept that way and i am not aware of more problems than with other stables but in case you get a virus or infectious desease in your stable you are facing a **** of a challenge to sanitize it.

I do know of places were new arriving horses will systematically get diseases just because the whole ground is infected. This stable had once 1 horse coming in having the disease so it all started with 1 infected box.
(cant recall the name of the disease but a non lethal lymphe infection which destroys the thymus (or something nearby). quite ugly thing. Horses can only get it once (logically) and it really is a pain to sanitize)

It all hangs together. At our place straw and shavings are replenished during the week and every weekend the boxes are emptied and left for the day to dry out. So no chance of accumulation Then new bedding is put in. start of winter and end of winter all boxes are power-washed and disinfected.

 

[weedsportpete]

We have floors similar to previous posters - hard clay, sand, rubber mats, sawdust. None of our stalls are sized to fit the mats perfectly - we had to cut mats in all of the stalls. Try to avoid having small pieces of mats to fit gaps. The small pieces get moved easily. We don't have a drainage problem, exactly, but we do get wet sawdust underneath the mats. Every month or so we end up picking up the mats and cleaning under them and repositioning them. This will all be avoided if the stall dimensions were something like 12x12, so mats fit tight without cutting. Cutting these mats is usually cumbersome & awkward. I use a long metal ruler and bend the mat over a board to help open up the cut as I go. As mentioned in other posts on TBN, its better to make many repeated shallow cuts than to try to make a single deep cut.

Some horse people, and a study quoted here on TBN, say it is ok for the horses feet & legs to have the rubber mats over concrete. And with concrete you are assured of a correct pitch for your drainage, and the rubber mats won't shift or slide as much as they would on gravel or sand. There are a series of horse barn books from Cherry Hill that recommend making 'tacks' by welding metal washers on top of nails and then using these to pound down into corners where rubber mats meet (obviously only needed if you don't have concrete under the mats). Based on recommendations from horse people I know and these books, I think that rubber mats are a good thing, both for the horses leg & foot health, and also to help make cleaning stalls easier (easier to use a pitch fork to pick the stalls clean). We go the extra mile and use our own routine for stall cleaning that gets it as clean as possible while preserving as much good sawdust as possible. We use the pitchfork (actually a horse manure fork from TSC) to pick off the easy to get, large pieces of manure, then use a shovel to first carefully scrape away only the top inch or so of sawdust until we find a urine-soaked spot, then use the shovel to completely remove all of this wet sawdust down to the rubber. Then we sift some PDZ stall cleaner/refresher onto the wet spot, and then clean the rest of the stall. I can see I'm writing a book here. Anyway, we are particular. I'm certain that we prevent leg & foot problems by keeping the stalls dry and 'cushiony'. Again, if you have not yet built the stalls, I highly recommend making the interior dimensions a multiple of the 3x4 mat size - a 12x12 stall will work great.

We previously used the wood pellet bedding and loved it - it is the easiest to clean, but we stiched to sawdust when the price of pellets went up when people switched to wood stoves.

Pete

 

[bota7800]

tciller already mentioned them but we really liked equiterr. We had it (over 6 inches of rock) in a barn we built . . We put a shallow layer of shavings on top. Most of the urine drained through and, after a short adjustment period, the rock acted as a septic with little smell. We had it in the wash stall over 12 inches which drained quickly.

We recently moved and our current barn has rubber mats over dirt. I dislike it immensely.
The urine pools and disturbs the shavings. We are going through shavings a lot faster here. If I could afford it I would excavate down and install equiterr.

 

[NY_Mr Project]

I have owned horses and been around horses my whole life. Save the Expenses and all the Headaches. Keep the floor a compant Dirt Floor.

On top of the dirt/wood/stonedust/plastic Mats is what is important for the horse.

• Some people use Peat moss as a "bedding"
  
• Some People Use Straw
  
• Some People Use Shavings
  
• In my OPINION (only an opinion) sawdust is great for horses and easy cleanup.

Good Luck

 

[tbalz]

We have about 12" of crusher run with rubber mats on top. The mats were cut to fit the 10x10 stalls with .125" gap or less. Fine wood shaving on top 1-2" thick. Everyday the wet shaving are removed along with the manure and fresh shaving are put in to replace. A $5.20 nag of shaving will last us 4 days per stall during nice weather