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base for stall

From: Crystal

I have enjoyed reading horse-sense and will continue to read it. I have a question that I cannot find an answer to. What is the best way to base a stall. I have friends that did clay and I worry about constant repair. I went to a school in Va that used crushed limestone and that worrys me for the same repair reason. I now am in a barn that uses mats and I have a very big gelding that is rubbing his hocks on the mats, no matter how deep I put his bedding. Could you recommed the best way to base a stall, we will be putting our barn up in about a month or so. I would appriciate any advice.

Thanks, Crystal Logan


Hi Crystal! Good question, and of course the answer will depend in part on where you are and what sort of land you are building on. You must have a stall that drains, and that may mean digging down a foot or two and putting in rock, then pebbles, then crushed rock, then roadpack or sand-and-clay mix.

No matter what you use, a horse that's determined to dig a hole will manage to dig a hole, unless you put mats on top of the stall flooring. This is a great way to add a little cushioning and keep the surface of the stall floor flat (again, be sure that the MATS drain!). In the long term, this can save a lot of effort and money, because the annual re-packing of lumpy stalls is a major drain on time and energy.... and you have to put the horses somewhere while you're doing it.

Using mats doesn't mean that you can use less bedding, though -- it just means that the bedding will last longer. If your gelding is rubbing his hocks when he's in eight inches of bedding, you may have to make it deeper -- perhaps a foot of bedding will do the job. Different horses (different heights, different weights, different lying-down habits) will require different amounts of bedding, but you do need to be quite sure that you don't cause your horse to develop capped hocks because of a lack of bedding, even if his stall has to be bedded twice as deeply as those of the other horses in the barn.

Jessica

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