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Old 04-01-2009, 09:18 PM   #11 (permalink)
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Default Re: Floor Options for Horse Stalls?

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

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Old 04-10-2009, 04:47 PM   #12 (permalink)
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Default Re: Floor Options for Horse Stalls?

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


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Originally Posted by ultrarunner View Post
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.
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Old 04-14-2009, 11:03 AM   #13 (permalink)
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Default Re: Floor Options for Horse Stalls?

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.
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Old 04-14-2009, 02:15 PM   #14 (permalink)
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Default Re: Floor Options for Horse Stalls?

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.

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Old 04-16-2009, 01:00 AM   #15 (permalink)
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Default Re: Floor Options for Horse Stalls?

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.
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Old 04-16-2009, 12:37 PM   #16 (permalink)
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Default Re: Floor Options for Horse Stalls?

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
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Old 04-17-2009, 09:37 AM   #17 (permalink)
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Default Re: Floor Options for Horse Stalls?

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
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