Jessica Jahiel's HORSE-SENSE Newsletter Archives

Stall flooring

From: Summer

Jessica, I have looked around for as much information as I can get on stall mats for my horses. It seems that the only people with opinions (online anyway) about stall mats are the people that sell them. So what I am looking to know is, what am I looking for in a stall mat? How do I know if one is better than another? Would a 'stall mattress' be better? What is the difference?

I currently have clay/dirt flooring in my stalls, and one of my three mares spends most of her time inside pacing and spinning. Due to pasture restraints, I am pretty sure that mats might be the way to go. Fewer shavings for her to destroy, and some of the mats claim that horses lie down more. Is this true?

This newsletter has been a wonderful resource since I found it. It is a really great thing to have somebody out there answering the little questions (and big ones) that horse owners are just expected to know. Thanks so much for your contribution to the horse world.

-Summer

Hi Summer! Stall mats can be great ways to improve your horse's comfort and health AND very convenient for horse owners. Over concrete floors such as the ones often found in converted dairy barns, they provide enough cushioning to keep horses from gong lame as they otherwise would from standing on concrete. In barns with dirt or clay floors, horses that paw, pace, spin, or weave can create depressions and eventually deep holes in the floors, and that means that at least once a year, the stalls have to be stripped of all bedding so that the clay can be replaced and tamped. That's heavy physical labour and can be quite time-consuming. Mats are a good way to solve several problems. Once you've prepared the surface and installed the mats, you'll find that stall-cleaning is much faster and easier, and you will never again turn your ankle in an uneven stall, or have to bring in a load of clay and a tamper.

Mattresses are not yet common in horse barns, but they're fairly popular in dairy barns - they were designed to increase the comfort (and the milk yield) of cows in tie stalls whilst lessening the inconvenience of managing several inches of bedding in each stall. The mattresses I've seen have been filled with crumb rubber and covered with a heavy-dyty rubberized geotextile. You cover the stall floor with it, fasten the top cover to the walls of the stall so that it doesn't move around, and you've got a soft bed that won't require a lot of bedding on top of it for comfort - but it WILL require very absorbent bedding to soak up the urine, because the mattress is effectively a non-draining system. If you try mattresses, I hope you'll let me know how they work out for you.

Mats are more commonly used at horse barns. Have you tried calling or visiting some of your area barns to find out who is using mats and which mats have been most successful? That might be a good way to begin. The quality can be variable, but here are some general guidelines.

What you'll be looking for in a stall mat is something that is corrugated/grooved surface on the underside for better stability and drainage, and flat on top (that is, not grooved, which can make stall-cleaning difficult, but definitely textured, NOT smooth and slippery), for safe traction. Typical stall mats are 3/4" thick and measure 4'x6', and it takes 6 of them to cover the floor of a 12x12 stall. Whether you choose straight-edged mats or the interlocking ones (those with edges like jigsaw-puzzle pieces) is simply a matter of personal preference. Some people find it easier to work with one style or the other. Mine are straight

With mats, there is some drainage, so be sure to put them down over a surface that drains well. Gravel, road-pack, decomposed granite - if the ground under the rock drains well, four inches of compacted gravel should make a good surface on which to put your mats. If it doesn't drain quite as well, then six inches would be better. It's worth spending some time on this. It will be possible to pull up individual mats and add gravel to the low spots underneath them later, but you won't need to do this if you're careful to get the surface flat before installing the mats.

You may be able to use less bedding, if you've been using extra bedding to try to cushion your horse's hocks and keep them from rubbing against a hard floor. A few inches of bedding may be all that you need over good stall mats, but don't skimp too much on the bedding, because especially if you don't have good drainage UNDER the mats, you'll want to be certain that your horses' bedding will absorb almost all of the urine. This is a concern for anyone using concrete-floored stalls in a converted dairy barn, but if you use a good quality, highly absorbent bedding such as one of the better brands of wood pellets, almost all of the urine will be absorbed by the bedding.

Right, let's assume that you've selected and purchased your mats, and brought them home - that is, someone at the store loaded them onto your trailer, and you're now home and trying to figure out how to get extremely heavy mats into your horses' stalls!

Before you do anything at all with the mats themselves, do two things: First, prepare the area where they're going to go. If the surface is concrete, hose it, scrub it, and let it dry. Some people put down a sprinkling of lime at this point - this isn't safe. Use baking soda or Sweet PDZ instead. Your face will be close to the floor when you're installing the mats, and moving mats into place will send some of the powder into the air and into your face. You do NOT want powdered lime in your face, even if you're wearing safety goggles.

Second, plan exactly where your mats are going to go, and in which direction you will place them all, so that you won't have to turn them in another direction at the last second when you get to the stall.

When you're ready to handle the mats (wear gloves, by the way), here's my system:

Lay a leadrope or a thick cotton or nylon rope (not a haystring), at least 10' long, across the center of the mat, so that you have 3' of mat on either side of the rope. Then lift the front edge of the mat and fold it back over itself, so that the edges meet. Don't worry, it won't pop flat again - its own weight will be quite enough to keep it folded. Now, you and your helper should each take an end of the leadrope, and pull the mat over to its destination in the barn. With two people involved, this is surprisingly easy, even if you're pulling the mats over gravel. Try to maneuver each mat into position so that it will BE in place when you unfold it - and then unfold it. You may have to shift it a little in one direction or another, and that's when you'll realize just how heavy it is.

If you're alone, you CAN actually move mats by yourself - just take both ends of the rope, bridge them, position yourself just in front of the center of the map, and pull it by the bridge. The pulling part will still be relatively easy, but it's much more difficult to position mats on your own, so I'd still recommend that you have a helper.

I know you didn't ask this, but just FYI - no matter how wonderfully comfortable and well-bedded a stall may be, you should still keep your horses outside as much as possible. The mare you described is unhappy, bored, and may eventually make herself lame through her activities in the stall, and you will need to think very seriously about finding somewhere else to keep her. Mats will help keep her stall flat, but they won't change the fact that she needs to be outside and she knows it.

Jessica

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