Building barns and horsekeeping on small acreage

[Enchantress]

While I've always had horses, I've always had the facilities and the land to support them. Now that I've moved from about 50 acres to 5 acres with no barn I'm looking for ideas on building a new barn.....any suggestions...do's and don'ts..what you would do differently etc. Ideally I'm going to be building 2 barns. The first will be this year and will be a small 4 stall shed-type stallion barn since they'll clearly need to be kept separated. Next year we're expecting to build the "real" barn but for now the girls will be fine all together with a good shelter. The "real barn" I'm expecting to be anywhere from 6 to 10 stalls. I'm also looking for ideas and opinions on shelters as well. And, of course, any suggestions about keeping horses on small acreage, such as hay storage, manure disposal etc would be greatly appreciated! At present I'm down to 17 horses who're scattered between a friend kind enough to loan me some barn space so I can at least SEE my poor horses (thanks Tracy!) and my parents who live 2 hours away. While I am working on getting down to a maximum of 10 (haha) I'm also planning for the "worst case scenario" where I'll have to winter them all.

So, any and all suggestions would be appreciated! Or, if you're looking for a horse.....

 

[~Dan]

We are currently on a very small acreage on a acre and a quarter with two minis, its a bit of a squeeze but it works. Note: portable fencing is your friend, the miniature horse panels step in posts and electric tape are your best friends on a small acreage, that way you can have any number of expandable paddocks and can have them all over. Calf huts and shelters on skids are a good idea as well. as well electroplastic netting can work for keeping foals or smaller minis near the barn as it is like woven wire fencing but is electrified. I'm not sure about barns but those are IMO some good things to have on a small acreage with a large herd of horses. A friend of ours owns a landscaping company so we take our manure up to his property where he mixes it up and makes topsoil with it, we use a little hand built trailer we had its maybe 6x6 at the most with side boards. We have an Amish shed we use for our grain lawn mower fencing materials tools and wheelbarrows and we have a little shed for hay storage which works well with our small herd of horses. A book you may want to check out is Horse Keeping On A Small Acreage, By Cherry Hill, it cover all of this as well as barn design and farm design. Best of luck.

Dan

 

[muffntuf]

I started out with 4 acres. I have a 50X80 barn along one side, and 3 huge paddocks surrounding three sides of the property. One smaller paddock and still have an acre of lawn to mow. I have a 40X60 oval pen set up along side the north paddock. The north paddock is a good acre in itself and I built it so I could split it in two when I have foals. They go on one side and the show ponies go on the other. The stallions are in one huge paddock on the other side of the property. I have three and they go out at different times. I have plenty of room yet.

 

[rabbitsfizz]

I currently have 17 horses on 5 acres (that's my mare herd) and they are fine, absolutely fine, virtually self sufficient.

Fat, too!

Ideally, I would have 12, but 17 is manageable.

For barns, you could do a lot worse than look at Marty's website and her barn building experiences, as she got a couple of things wrong, so those are pitfalls you could avoid!

 

[Carolyn R]

Always have the barn slightly elevated or up hill. Think about having someone do the frame and do the rest if you can, to cut costs but ensure it has a good start. It is cheaper to go with standard sizes that you can buy prefab tresses for (cheaper than making them because they are mass produced). It would have cost me much more to have a shed row put in than it did for me to have the frame work and roof put up for a 24x40 with a huge "pavillion porch" and 6-10x10 stalls. The reason is it would have taken alot more custom work and framing than going with a standard size with prefab trusses. Beyond framing and roofing, I am doing the rest myself.

Concrete flooring is great if the barn is on level ground or downhill, this will keep the floors from turning into mudd, however, concrete offers not natural drainage. You can hose down stalls, but must use a broom or something of the sort, to get rid of water.

Dirt flooring, a layer of stone and snug fitted stall mats will offer a good even surface and drainage in barns with an elevated base (dirt sits higher than dirt around it).

The best thing I could have done with the barn I am currently building is having the framework (frame and roof) done by a professional (I know it was done right from the start). Take complete advantage of local resources (discount overstock stores that carry latches, hinges, and the large round handled door knockers make great heavy duty tie rings that are completely smooth and very nice looking, local rough cut lumber for stalls and walls rather than finished lumber from home depot or lowes....)

There are some barn topics and photos on the photo forum.

Good Luck!

 

[Marty]

I removed our barn building saga page but replaced it with our farm tour page. I can't say we made any real bad mistakes that I regret except that I really would have liked to have a bathroom and warm water, which remains to be seen possibly in the future but I won't hold my breath. A mistake we did make was at first, we did not have frost prove lighting so we had to remove all the light fixtures and replace them and that was a huge expense. Every time it got cold, I had no lights.

It is built up really high, several feet above ground level and we then waited nearly a year for the pad to settle and that was the smartest thing we could have done. It is ditched all around for water run off purposes. Another smart thing. It is centrally located with a back and front entrance which all leads out to separated fields and the barn yard serves as my main dry lot. I now have 6 fields, wonderful for separation and rotation purposes, all field fenceing with hot wire knee high. In other words, the barn is in the middle and all fields surround it. I love that. I also love that the main barn is only 50 feet from my house! I have gravel paths that lead from the barn to each field so I don't get myself stuck or slipping in the mud and also I can drive my truck or Rover to each with no worries of getting mud stuck either. Most of my stalls have a french drain, a thick layer of gravel with a thick layer of sand on top. Some have chat, then mats, but only a couple have mats. I do like the mats and bought one or two a month when I found them on sale at Tractor Supply. Stalls are 10 X 10 with removable walls for foaling which came in handy. My quarter horse has a 10 X 20. The isleway is chat and I love it. My driveway leads directly to the barn which makes it simple to unload feed and hay.

I did get carried away with too many horses so we then added a two stall run in with a separate dry lot paddock and adjoining private field across from the main barn about 25 feet.

As far as hay storage, I really never liked the idea of storring hay in the barn. I'm terrified of fires so for our hay storage, I use an old garden shed which is away from the barn and holds about 200 bales. I stack my baled shavings outside on a pallet.

There is nothing fancy or what you would call impressive on my place but it is very servicable and what I call a real "using barn". After all, its not what the barn looks like, its how the horses are cared for that really counts.

Good luck and best wishes to you.

 

[rubyviewminis]

Marty, I love your barn and how everything is situated.

 

[Genie]

THis isn't our barn but it's the one I would like.

They are built off site and moved to your location, her in Ontario(Modular barns, built by Denco)

 

[Genie]

I thought I would share a picture of the barn we have now. It's the old bank barn style. Lots of room but was a dairy barn and we gutted the lower level to put oak stalls and laid cushion floor stall mats on the cement to ease the leg strain.

My last post with the Denco barn would be my dream replacement of this barn.