Concreting my barn

[michele80906]

Hey everyone. Just looking for some opinions/experience about concrete stalls. Do you like them if you have them...or dislike and why or know anyone who has them. We are eventually going to concrete our barn in the next year I hope. Right now, my minis have nice size stalls with runs and I lock them up at night because of the predators around here. The floor is dirt and is so dusty in my barn it drives me crazy. They have dirt stalls with mats except for their lying down area that I bed with shavings. They of course pee in that area also. I was thinking if I concreted, I would put drains in and continue to bed them, of course and have the mats over the concrete...so...what do you think? I have the option of not concreting their area if that is best. Thank you in advance. Michele

 

[bevann]

My barn is an old dairy barn.There was already lots of concrete and some dirt areas.We had removed the manure trough and manger and filled that in with concrete.After using the dirt areas for stalls for several years we put concrete in the whole barn.I LOVE IT All the stalls are matted)bought them a few at a time).My barn doesn't smell like urine and there are no big holes anywhere.I use barn dri in pee spots sprinkle with pellets in pee spots and use shavings.There is very little removal and the barn smells nice.I don't use many shavings either.I have mostly senior horses here and 3 in about 12-14 hours at night so I can monitor water intake.Go for the concrete if you can swing it.

 

[Carolyn R]

I have both types, my older barn has concrete that was matted, my new barn has about 18 inches of compacted gravel, then mats. I prefer the stone with the mats. The stone allow urine to drain through the mats and keeps large bedded areas from getting saturated. Concrete was nice, but it is a bit hard on older horses, cold and radiates dampness, I matted it for comfort but the urine smell got pretty strong at times and would prove to be a pain to drag out and wash stall mats and concrete. It is used as storage now.....feed hay grain tack, the other is used for stall space.

 

[shorthorsemom]

We have a dairy barn that had concrete stalls. We used to have hock and knee issues with our cows from them plopping down on the concrete and bedding would slip to the side and they would be laying directly on the concrete. We spent the money and had a man named petersheim make cow mattresses for our entire barn. They are easy to clean off and provide decent laying for the cows and the hock and knee issues disappeared with the addition of the mattresses. They repel the liquid and our kind are filled with tire shredding, some are available with water filled rubber matting. Our mattresses were an orange cloth feeling stuff. THis was about 10 years ago and we are glad we made the change. When I had riding horses and we used an old dairy barn, people would backfill dirt into the stalls and cover with rubber mats and then bed on top of that.

I would personally not use concrete under bedding for my horses if I had a choice.

 

[Becky]

I built my show barn in 2000 and put in a concrete floor. I love it! The stalls are fully matted and I use shavings over the mats. Less dust and the floor, of course, is always level. The stalls are cleaned daily and wet/solied bedding replaced. I sweep the aisle daily so it stays clean. Love my barn!

 

[Wings]

My current stalls are concrete and I love them, will be repeating it in my new stalls but may add really good mats that the urine can't get under. For now though I just put down a thicker bed either of shavings or straw and the horses are fine on it.

Clean up is so easy as they are slightly sloped, I just muck out and then hose them out, very little fuss!

 

[Marty]

I agree with Carolyn. My former quarter horse barn had a concrete flooring and it made no difference on the dust factor at all. I also blammed it on miscellaneous lameness flare ups on this one and that but I can't prove it. It just bothered me all the time no matter how deep I made the bedding, it was a worry. I also hated with a passion to have to sweep the asile way a half a million times a day also. Way too time consuming. I also had another barn that had asphalt stalls and they were a lot better in comparrison to having concrete. They have a "give" to them. in the asile, when a horse would walk, they would leave an imprint but a few minutes later, it was gone. It was pretty neat but we didn't build that one. My present barn is concrete but not on the flooring. It has gravel and sand base and then about half of my stalls are matted because I'm a poor person and I have to mat one stall at a time.I highly recommend doing your 1/4 gravel base thick, then a thick load of sand on top for a french drain. Then mat it. My asile is chat which is crushed limestone/sand/gravel mix a nice texture you can comfortably walk on barefoot. Keeps dust down and looks nice, easy to rake up hay droppings.

 

[MountainWoman]

Don't have any concrete in my Vermont barn. We're building a new barn in Missouri and we went back and forth about whether to use concrete because of bugs. I hate bugs and they abound in our Missouri location. We decided in the end to forgo the concrete except for my tack room. I think I asked dozens of people making this decision. Everyone has different ideas about what they like.

 

[Suzie]

I have concrete barn isles, but my stall areas are compacted areas of layers of dirt/layer of plastic/ layer of 3 inches of fine gravel/covered by the thick black horse stall mats. I don't like my horses standing on concrete. I am not crazy about them walking on concrete as they tend to be slick (and we left our rough brushed especially to try and avoid it being slick) and I have had 2 horses fall on them anyway. But, we drive our tractor down our isle to empty and clean stalls and concrete for that was our best choice to stand up to the weight of the tractor over time. I can water down the concrete isles in summer to cool off the barn and in winter, the sun heats it up some to radiate heat back into the barn at night.

We tend to have damp winters and summers here and the bottom layer of plastic against the dirt makes a nice vapor barrier for that. We like the 3 inches of gravel under the mats as it provides a nice cushion. The rubber mats on top make a soft layer and are very easy for cleanup.

In our area the price for mats and the price for concrete was about equal. All things equal, I MUCH prefer the thick black mats for my horses to stand on.