Important Details in Horse Stable Design

- [Danielle] Today our speaker is Dr. Eileen Fabian, and she will be discussing today important details in horse stable design, so with that I will turn it over to Dr. Fabian.

- [Eileen] Thank you, thank you very much.

Glad to be here, this is fun.

I always love talking about horse stables, and horse facilities, so a delight for me.

What I'm gonna go over today in quite a few slides here is just a variety of topics related to I'll say horse facilities.

I wanted this to be a bit of a smorgasbord give you some kind of the small items, sometimes, forgotten features that we find, or, sometimes, are lacking in our horse stables.

This is from an engineering perspective.

I'm an agricultural engineer.

Sometimes, I'm a biological engineer, but this is a set of information that I've been developing over decades of working in the agricultural sector with farm animal housing including, you know, my own personal interests in horses, and professional interest in their stabling and design.

Looking at a bit of an outline for this webinar the important details in horse stable design what I thought I'd cover first is kind of high-end, and typical facilities looking at a bit of horse welfare related to those facility.

Some trends that we're seeing for the future.

Then I'll get into maybe a little more depth in the topics looking at the integrity of these stables or shelters, looking at environmental features both indoor and outdoor environment, and then, also, looking at some of the storage in these barns let's see what we're doing there.

And then, finally, getting back into offering you a smorgasbord of ideas a variety some desirable details that we're seeing could be included in these facilities.

First of all, I'm finding that defining a horse stable is not really all that simple.

When you consider where you might be housing your current horse or past horses, I think there's a good need to consider both the high-end and some typical facilities because they can be very different, but I do want to point out that there's a common goal in providing a better environment for the horse than they would have had if they had been outdoors.

Horse welfare issues are becoming more important both indoors and outdoors facilities, and generally how we care for these animals.

How much shelter do we need?

The focus of this has been on stables, and I'll use that word throughout the presentation, but as you hear the word stable also think of shelters that you're providing for your animal whether that looks like a formal stable, or it looks more like a run-in shed, or it looks like a copse of trees that the animals are able to access out in a field.

There is a well intentioned perception of greater need for shelter by I would call them the general public, but horses are just fine outside, aren't they?

Millions of years they've been outside.

We've chosen to shelter them for many reasons I can get into if that's of interest later, but the focus on the shelter we have the same features that we would have outside as we do in the shelter itself.

A man-made building is not necessary for housing them, and as I've tried to point out here a natural shelter can be enough for the horses, but we have reasons why we put them inside.

I primarily work with builders and engineers, and people who are constructing animal facilities throughout agriculture, and I interviewed a few of them a couple of years ago in order to build some more data for these kind of presentations, and their perspective seemed to be that the trainers, and I'll say managers know horses in general.

They manage the welfare and the environment of the horses to the benefit of the horse, but they were finding that owners, sometimes, were quite variable in knowledge.

Some very well knowledgeable, and others not so, and they may be overriding some otherwise good decisions in barn construction and management.

Some of the thoughts there was after all it's just a barn.

Important details.

Let's take a look at some of these features looking at high-end and typical facilities, and, again, a bit of a focus on welfare as it relates to the facilities themselves.

Usually people put in trends for the future at the end of a presentation.

I'm gonna throw them in here toward the beginning as we look toward current facilities, and how those trends might be coming forward through current practices.

Typical horse facilities, something that I might own, you probably own.

We tend to make decisions that optimize the money used for the necessities.

Horses are more commonly kept outside in a typical horse facility, hobby owner, backyard farm owner and manage, and there's usually no full-time labor on these operations.

The high-end horse facilities kind of turn that around a little bit, and, although, they may be luxurious in some ways in their construction they often have limited turnout, the horse is kept indoors a lot, and quite a lot of importance is, sometimes, the elegance and the statement of the facility.

All facilities should have an emphasis on zero injury, or at least minimize injury to the animal.

Particularly with show and high-performance, high-value animals, they need to be unblemished for their maximum value, and for any horse owner only a sound horse are really all that useful.

Looking at some of the horse welfare topics in the relation to the stable, we can find all kinds of articles and anecdotal evidence of outdoor versus indoor kept horse, and what they prefer.

Monitoring behavior of horses with free access to be indoors and outdoors during good weather, bad weather, fly season, icy weather, et cetera.

My concern in some of the modern stable designs, or trends, thereof, are the social needs of the horse, versus some barns that I've been in where it looks like the horses are in solitary confinement, which goes against some of their natural behavior, and social needs, whether that be actual physical needs of grooming, allogrooming each other, or just visual needs of contact.

I do understand why horses are kept individually in stalls for training and such, but I do want people to be more aware, and consider welfare and management when they take a look at how they construct their buildings.

Horse welfare look at the herd aspects of horse psychology, and their need and ability to socialize, and in looking at barns and working with managers of facilities that are more open like the ones pictured here they talk about easy it is to manage these facilities because they can see the stall occupants in one easy glance.

And if a horse head and a body is missing as they look down the row of stalls they can easily walk down there to see what's going on if anything is amiss.

We'll talk a bit later about ventilation, and the ease of keeping fresh air throughout a facility like this when it's open.

I told you we'd be talking about more than just a formal stable, and you look at turnout shelters, and the options there.

People call them run-in sheds in some parts of the country.

It's a simple shade.

It's a windbreak from the worst of the winds, and the weather, which, again, can be provided by trees, and a copse of trees, or partial buildings.

One aspect of any kind of turnout is having very handy gate options, one hand operation on these gates you have the other.

You're leading or encouraging a horse with one hand, and you'd be open a gate quickly, and easily with the other hand.

Covered hay feeders, big bale stations all part of managing horses in groups, or individually in outside turnouts.

Trends for the future.

Talking to builders and the engineers that are working on these buildings, and the managers of these facilities we're looking at something I'd like to present more here in the United States, or as a European more of a European aspect here for backyard horses where there's a combination of a turnout with stable, and exercise has been promoted there.

Heated stables in the United States, by that I mean stables that are using what we call supplemental heat, natural gas, propane, electricity.

Heated stables are fairly uncommon in the United States, and I focus this topic on northeastern stables.

Think of Pennsylvania climate and weather in New York, in New England, et cetera, heated stables are still uncommon, but some are partially heated for cold weather, for human comfort while the horse area might be at ambient temperature.

Again, something we can talk about in another webinar, or a little later today.

In-floor heat or radiant overheat those applications are becoming more dominant when we want to have some extra heat in these stable environments.

And the engineers the people who are building these structures for managers and horse owners are talking about the pre-engineered, or pre-fabricated construction, and its cost efficiencies.

Before we move on we talked about having some polling questions.

This is a place where I'd ask my colleagues there to pop up poll question number one, and we can just take a summary of how you are, or you prefer to house your horse.

So the question is do you prefer keeping your horse primarily in a stable stall, a stall in a stable, a stall with a periodic turnout, turnout or pasture with a shelter of some sort, or a combination of the above?

So we'll just ask you to pick one of those answers if you will.

Looks like we got our finals in here with the combination of the above being most prevalent, which is what I probably would have predicted.

Stalls with periodic turnout, and turnout with pasture shelter being the other two options.

Very good.

A set of topics that I wanted to cover here was looking at the integrity of the building.

Let's take a look at some of the environmental features that we might look at as integrity in these barns.

Nationwide trends, nutrient management guidelines.

I call it manure, but it is nutrient management.

I don't expect you to read the one slide with all the detail on it, but we've got all kinds of good information about the regulations and each tend to be state based.

The picture there is showing a composting structure that is part of one of the options that we can use to manage manure and nutrient needs on the farm.

I'm not gonna get into that today.

It's another one of those topics that we can cover at a future time.

Nationwide trends, keeping the integrity of these farms in good shape.

What I do want to talk to you a bit more about is manure, manure storage and material movement.

A drawing here looking at just what's involved in providing a simple manure storage area.

It doesn't have to be elaborate, doesn't have to be expensive, but just some very basic features here to keep clean water clean, and leachate from mixing with the clean water knowing that you're gonna be moving this material in and out perhaps by mechanical means, or perhaps by hand.

Taking a look at material movement while we're on this topic, and as an engineer I guess I in some ways get stuck with some of the less glamorous topics in stable design one of those is material movement, which is manure, stall waste, manure feces, urine, and stall waste.

Save some time on this stuff.

If you feel like you're breaking your back, and you're moving tons of material, I assure you, you are moving tons of material.

You look at a lot of different numbers on how much stall waste a single horse generates, but it's on the order of 12 tons of stall waste a year.

My fear is that people end up spending more time moving materials around a stable than riding a horse, and caring for your horse, and spending quality time with your horse unless we take some good aspects of material movement, and move these into the stable.

Efficient ways to move bulky materials.

Bulky materials I'm talking about moving bales of hay in, feedbags in.

One of the ways to do that is to make sure that you're loading things in perhaps to a central area of the stable very easily.

Trucks, some whatever conveyance can move easily up to the stable, or you're conveying things on the farm from a long-term storage into the short-term in the barn, and then easily moving bulky materials back out to the storage.

Here I've showed the storage as this little U-shaped partition there toward the bottom of the screen.

Let's think of how if you're moving 12 tons of manure out, stall waste out, it means you've moved at least that much material in per horse.

Efficient movement of bulky material we want to go straight and wide.

Nice wide doors coming out of those stalls.

Even bigger wider doors coming out of the stable.

Straight line movement is easiest versus going around corners and curves, and up and down things.

Straight line maybe making a turn, and depositing things into that manure storage.

Avoid tight passages, avoid tight turns.

Nothing worse that scarping the skin of the knuckles of your hands while you're trying to wheel a wheelbarrow through a very narrow doorway.

Might as will be bright about it.

Both providing light in the stall, so you can see what you're doing, and also providing light out at that manure drop-off area, the stall waste drop-off area.

In the northeast we have limited day length in the winters, and sometimes we're doing this type of chores after work, so it's just provide enough light that we can turn on and off when we're doing our chores.

And, finally, take it easy.

Moving all this stuff isn't easy, but we might as well make it as easy as we can.

One thing we do have for free is gravity.

Here in Pennsylvania we have topography to take advantage of that.

To drop things down I say don't pick things up more than once minimize the lifting.

You picked it up in the stall.

There's some mechanization that can help you with that, but you're gonna lift it once, and I say don't lift it again.

Mechanization options for handling materials a lot of handwork cleaning stalls.

That's the predominant way of cleaning stalls, but there are things like gutter cleaners that come from other industries, and other farm animal industries, but they will work in barns completely safe.

They are mechanical so this is maintenance involved.

Look into any tractor amount of tools you can to try to make this job as easy as you can.

You see a lady in the bottom right hand corner she's got an elevated lift on her tractor.

She's lifted something.

At least she's not lifting it up over her head to dump it into that pile.

Handy hand tools.

Neat storage of tools with access to barn-safe electric power nearby, and good lighting.

Keep the stuff handy.

You're not always cleaning all at once.

Let's try to minimize the trips back and forth to tack areas and just make it as easy as you possibly can.

You'll also note on the picture on the right we've got overhead lighting that's on the side of the aisle, and I'll get into a few details if you're considering lighting on these stables, or in a shelter.

Time saving water access.

A frost-proof hydrant is the name for this feature that I've circled here.

It's a self-draining water tap in the stable for freezing conditions.

It will work all year round, obviously, but you bring the water up, you get what you need, and the water drains back down below the frost line, so that you can maintain barns with good air quality in the building without worrying about the facility freezing.

These also work outside.

Quality storage.

I wanted to mention some things about this because I've got some conclusions, and recommendations on this after working in stables for so many years.

I'm maybe gonna surprise you with the next slide looking at I'm predicting a third of your barn.

Barn space or shelter space is gonna be devoted to some kind of storage for the horses.

By that I mean let's say you have four horses, and you've built a four stall stable, my recommendation is that you provide at least another third of that space for storage of items.

Now with a four horse stable that means you would be providing about the equivalent of another two stalls worth of space just for storage, and you're probably thinking, boy, that sounds like a lot.

Let's just start adding it up here.

You need a secure area for your tack, and some small supplies.

You need a very secure feed area, if not a feed room.

You have short-term hay and bedding storage in the barn.

You may will have longer term storage elsewhere.

Tools and equipment, and then, also, in this sort of a barn in bigger facilities that might want this you have some extras that aren't exactly storage, but areas for wash stalls, or a vet and farrier area.

So let's walk through those a little bit at a time here.

First of all, storage of your tack.

Tack is a pretty big investment, and keeping the integrity of that is, I think, very important.

You need a clean area, dry, rodent-proof closed space.

It's often or more often heated in a cold climate to try to reduce some mold on the leather, and other synthetics, and while you're at it you might as will keep it bright.

The one picture is showing lockers at a public facility.

Everybody has a secure place to put their own tack, and the other is a private facility, the picture on the right showing a private facility.

Nice and bright.

We don't have feed stored in here.

We'll get the feed storage here in a moment, but the tack room, also, in many stables both private and public, there's a lot of social aspects within that environment, cleaning tack, meeting other people before going out for a ride, so some of these are finished to a residential standard, whereas, our housing where we have the horses is built more to a barn or a livestock standard.

Tack and social areas.

The private barn shown here.

Home amenities are not necessary, but they aren't also necessarily a luxury in a busy stable.

We have a relaxation area, a bathroom, area for snacks and drinks, laundry for horse gear.

So we're, again, a residential standard in these parts of the building, but a nice amenity.

So as these things get more complicated like this you end up with more storage.

Hay and bedding storage deserves some conversation more than one slide, but what I encourage you to do, highly encourage you to do is maintain that investment in high quality hay and bedding.

Horse hay is a high quality hay it's expensive hay, and having it housed in a structure that protects that investment is important.

Keep your bulk supply in a separate structure.

A smaller supply is kept conveniently near the stable for daily use or weekly use, and we can get into some of the why's and how's of that at any time that you're interested.

Overhead hay storage, I've recommended against this for years.

It's often a nice feature.

It seems very convenient to have the hay up there, and we can spend 10 slides talking about this, but I'm trying to fly through some features, and supply you with some details with a strong recommendation we've come up with over the years.

Respiratory problems with the dust and the mold that just rains down on the horses in the stables.

The stable will be dustier with the hay, and the bedding stored in it, and when it's stored overhead like this in the stable shown here, it restricts airflow for the ventilation system, which is all important.

We're trying to keep this stable fresh air, and good conditions for the respiratory health of those animals.

Storage for tools and equipment.

Most barns will need some kind of utility room, especially, if you have hot water that's needed in there.

Some stables prefer to do the laundry, the horse laundry right at the stable rather than bringing them into the house.

Drying area for those blankets and things some of them that can't be put into a dryer space.

There's all kinds of room for tool storage.

I'm showing somebody cleaning a stall.

Where you gonna put this?

I mean it's a simple thing it's just a wheelbarrow, but where you gonna put that?

Where you gonna put manure spreaders, and those kind of equipment?

Not officially storage per se, but often included in horse facilities we planned for some extra space needed in a shelter, or the stable for a wash stall.

Primarily this relates to water drainage.

You can have a wash area in a simple shelter outside.

What are you gonna do about the water that's coming off even the end of a hose?

What are we doing about that water drainage?

Relating to the integrity of the environment, and not creating big mud holes, or ice slicks out in a pasture turnout area.

And veterinarian farrier work.

Popular facilities very practical is to have an area of your stable where the veterinarian and the farrier can visit, and have a good experience on your facility.

I say popular because these are gonna be very popular with your veterinarians and your farriers.

These are the kind of people I work with, particularly veterinarians in stable design and integrity, and one of the things they really like is having a dedicated area where they come in they have good light, good footing, a secure area to work on the horse, and easy access back to their vehicle that they arrived with.

It doesn't have to be fancy.

It just can be a dedicated area that's good for them, lighting, and ability to work out of the weather is two large requests.

Some farms will actually put in a constraint area where they can isolate a horse.

Grooming stations shown those are very popular in public barns where you bring the horse out of the stable you're not cross tying in the aisle anymore.

You're bringing it into a grooming station, which can also double as wash stalls.

It doesn't have to be a lot of them.

Doesn't have to be fancy, but is a dedicated area.

Most stables seem to have an area, or a stall for hosing down a horse and equipment.

It might also double as a grooming station.

We're getting much better now at materials, and the function of those areas.

We're showing one here with tile.

I don't think we need to get that fancy, but it's very nice, but we're using materials that come out of other agricultural operations that are waterproof, easily washable, easy to keep clean.

You do remember that with the moisture that's coming off of these wash down processes that moisture needs to be removed by the ventilation system in the barn, particularly during winter conditions when we have the barns a little more closed up than we do in the summer.

Important details.

We're getting toward a smorgasbord of details that I thought I would have you take a look at, and I believe this is a point where we'd like to take poll question number two.

Top priority for your horse's stable shelter is?

And I'm asking you to pick your top one.

I know a lot of these overlap, but I'm asking you to ask yourself what would be the top one?

Management convenience.

Second one, horse health and welfare.

Environment quality.

Modest cost.

Aesthetic design.

All right, I'll let you off the hook.

I said how about something else, other?

And if you do maybe you'll tell us what that might be in the checkbox.

Looks like our poll is complete.

The top priority that people chose was horse health and welfare, which I'm glad to see that.

That is the whole point of sheltering a horse as I said in the beginning to have an environment where the horse is in better conditions than it would have if it was outside.

Management convenience that's got to be important.

I mean, obviously, we've made it less convenient in some ways to put the horse inside, and other ways it is more convenient because I know where the horse is, and we can go pluck them out of the stall or the shelter to interact with them.

And modest cost, we all have budgets.

Very good.

Desirable details.

If we're gonna keep stables above freezing we need to provide supplemental heat.

Supplemental heat that comes from usually fossil fuel sources directly or indirectly.

Radiant heat from a lamp.

Electricity, or burning propane, or natural gas are the three that would come to mind quickly.

In-floor heat is an energy efficient and effective option.

It's not highly used, but it's becoming more common.

It is a relatively expensive installation usually involves some kind of fluid that flows through the floor in the facility.

This picture shown from Sweden the woman there on the right, an in-floor heating system.

These are, again, focused mostly on cold climate housing, which we have here in Pennsylvania.

Unit space, I call them unit space heaters.

In this case they're both overhead units you see there in the pictures.

I should have circled them for you.

They're kind of a boxy looking thing almost.

One has a fan that's visible on the left, and the other one the fan is behind the unit on the right, but they're less expensive certainly than installation of an in-floor heating system.

They're less energy efficient primarily because as we see there they're up and overhead, and they're making heat and dumping it up high.

Hot air rises.

There's nothing in this barn here to encourage that hot air to come back down to where the animals and humans are working.

This is a veterinary clinic.

They do have some fan up in there to try to move air around, but stratification will take over, and will have all the hot air up in the ceiling, and very little down at the floor, hence the interest now in floor heat, which is right where our feet are, where the animals are.

Another radiant option, floor heat is considered radiant heat in some circles, but the more popular, and more direct radiant over heat option is the overhead option.

I've circled the two units here.

One in a grooming stall, a very elegant looking radiant heat option, a drying option there, and the other a long tube that's in an indoor riding arena setup.

So the radiant heat here heats the object it sees, and it's kind of like the sun's radiant energy.

If you're within sight of the sun you get the radiant heat from the sun that also indirectly warms anything that it can see, and then that will reradiate heat off of it, so it could heat the floor of the building, or the floor of the indoor riding arena, but it's very efficient warmth.

If you're not under it you don't feel it, and it can be turned on and off fairly quickly.

Moving onto lighting.

Fluorescent lamps are very good for energy efficient lighting, and we've all learned that in the past 10 years moving away from incandescent bulbs which are not energy efficient.

Fluorescents have a very long bulb life, provide even high quality task lighting.

We do highly recommend placing the fixtures to the side of an aisle as shown here in this picture, and in the front of the stall.

These fixtures here also provide the stall light.

They could be separate units.

Some for the stall, some for the aisle, but in here they doubled it up, and put in fixtures that could do both.

The reason for doing that, particularly on the stall, many diagrams for stall design show a bulb in the middle of the 12 by 12 foot stall.

Well, then when your horse walks to the front of the stall to greet you it's throwing a shadow on itself, so you really can't see the horse.

We put the light on the front of the stall, and even no matter where the horse is in that stall it has light on it instead of being back lit.

One problem with fluorescent lamps, the least expensive ones that are easy to buy will not necessarily start in cold weather.

By that I mean freezing or just subfreezing.

Even getting in temperatures lower than just subfreezing you end up with some fluorescent structures fluorescent fixtures won't light at all, or they take a long time to light, so they need ballasts on them which is the unit that controls the light energy into the lamp, and they need what's called a cold start ballast.

That's a detail we can spend quite a bit of time on lighting, when enough people have an interest in that.

Other details that are desirable large windows in barns.

They're protected by a grill here, or a set of bars to keep the horses from punching through them because we don't want them broken.

Large windows for light and fresh air.

Windows that open will give you fresh air.

Windows that won't open, obviously, don't provide any fresh air.

Open grill work for the visual contact of horses, and observation.

Stall partition options.

I recommend a grill mesh, which we see here in both these pictures rather than the bars.

Friendship grills between stalls.

That's something that one of the builders in Pennsylvania here was saying was becoming more common because people were realizing some of the disadvantages of having the solid partitions between the stalls, but they didn't want to completely give that up, so they were coming up with these friendship panels that they put in.

They're about one meter wide kind of one meter square if you will.

Allow some socialization between the horses.

Let's talk about spend a minute or two on this slide, and talk about these grills.

My high recommendation is to have open grill work between stalls.

Having been with plenty of managers they don't want horses fighting and bickering between stalls, and I get that, I understand that, I hear that, I see that.

What I would like people to do is if they feel they're gonna have individuals that are cranky, we'll call them, let's go ahead and build one or two stalls that have a solid partition, but keep the rest of them open.

Even better than that have a way to cover the grill work between two menacing individuals, and just punish those two instead of the entire stable of individual horses if you think it's only gonna be a couple of them that are bickering, or there's reason to anticipate bickering like a mare with a foal or something like that.

The friendship panels, of course, are a little easier because you can put on a small piece of plywood if you will to close that off.

So that's the recommendation.

Let's get these horses being able to see each other.

It greatly enhances air movement through the barn to improve ventilation instead of the horse being in a small box.

We could spend a whole presentation on ventilation, and air quality environments.

The other thing I like about these grills I learned one of my colleagues in Sweden was talking about how we had it all backwards with dog kennels and horse bars, and he raised both beasts.

He said, "Look at this, we have dog kennels, "and we put mesh on it." Think a chain link fence.

My dogs climb those things and get out.

I've had dogs do the same.

And then we come into the horse barn we put bars on the stalls and horses kick through them.

It's been a long time recommendation to put a bar on a stall that's three or four inches wide, but horses kick through them, so it's not really the dimension it's the strength of that bar.

This man in Sweden had done quite a bit of work on determining the strength of the bars to keep horses from kicking through, but at his own stable he said, "What we really need are mesh like this." The horses can't even nibble, lips through and bite each other.

There's no kicking through these panels.

We still get the airflow.

And, oh, by the way, back to that conversation with the dogs he said, "I have vertical bars on my kennels.

"The dogs can't climb vertical bars." So what he said we got it backwards we want the bars on the dog kennels, and we want the mesh on the horse partitions.

So something for you to think about.

We do see more and more of the manufacturers going to this mesh that's allowed on the front of the stalls all the way down to the floor, sometimes, and in between stalls.

Details desirable.

Open interior get it open and airy for natural light.

It looks bright and airy to most occupants of the building.

Gets the airflow moving around that building, so we have good ventilation into all those stalls.

I do want to caution you I have this picture here it's from a Maryland facility that was a fairgrounds not used in the deep of the summer, but you will get a lot of solar entry from translucent panels in the roof like this, and depending on installation you can end up with leakage, glazing condensation in cold weather.

My recommendation would be to put panels like this around the eaves up under the eaves, and along the side walls just so you get a lot of bright light in that way.

Speaking of light there could be too much.

In the summer if we put some overhangs on these buildings we can block the summer sun which is high in the sky.

This is a picture showing that.

With the high summer sun we've got the windows shaded from getting excessive light and overheating in there, whereas, the sun angle on the low here in the northeast in the northern hemisphere we've got slow winter sun angle, so that overhang is not gonna block some direct light, and some brightness in the wintertime when we would enjoy that extra light in the stable.

Looking at bright interiors hoop structures became popular.

They've been popular in some fields for 20 some years.

Translucent fabric is another option for these.

They have been difficult to ventilate properly the hoop structures, but when we went to structures that had a standard frame construction with a translucent roof material like the riding arena here we had an improvement where we could get some ventilation in there with the eaves.

Condensation is still somewhat of a problem in the winter with these uninsulated roofs, but you have brightness, and perhaps some condensation problems.

Light and airy conventional construction.

Riding arenas we've done some work collecting data in there, and they're actually more humid, and can be more harsh than the stable environment.

Riding arenas, warm weather we want panels that open for fresh air exchange, and natural light when we can get it.

Sliding vent panels work really well.

We want permanent wall openings in these facilities to make sure we get the arena to breathe, and allow fresh air in and out.

Large windows throughout the structure.

I'm getting to the point where I want to do some summarizing of all the variety of things we've covered here today.

Poll question number three to be brought up at this point.

Does your horse's shelter or stable have any of these features?

You're allowed to pick more than one here, multiple choices.

Frost-proof water hydrant.

Automatic water.

Any kind of stall waste manure mechanization.

A supplemental heat in the horse area.

Wash stall.

Veterinary or farrier work area formal area for that.

All right, looks like our results are in with the frost-proof water hydrant.

Glad to see that that you're able to have good water access, and not be worried about the freezing conditions.

Wash stall, we're always washing something down around horses if it's not the horse itself.

Supplemental heat in the horse area got the fewest, and that's not surprising I mentioned that earlier.

It's not that common in horse stables.

Stall waste mechanization it would be interesting to find out how much of that is being used.

Automatic waters, and then I'm glad to see the veterinary or farrier work area.

That's a complaint that I am cognizant of from our veterinary friends.

Very good.

Summary, important details in horse stable design.

We covered these topics.

I can't go into all the high-end and typical facilities, but I tried to kind of smear the topics that could be covered in both, and hope that was all right with you.

We talked a little bit about some of the horse welfare issues in stable design.

There's more, but we hit some of the ones that are more commonly seen.

A little bit of the trends for the future looking at having what I would see is a trend for the future is having heated areas where the owners and handlers have heat in the winter, whereas, the rest of the stable is kept at ambient temperature, and opened for ambient and fresh air conditions.

Integrity of the stable we talked a bit about manure, and nutrient management, and I gave you some ideas of how to effectively, and efficiently handle that quickly, and with less of your time spent moving those tons of material.

And in storage looking at perhaps a third of your covered area being dedicated to storage of the different materials, and equipment and tack that you need.

Desirable details was a variety of things that I just brushed across.

It could easily be full webinars in themselves.

Horse housing I see it as an improvement.

If it's not then we're not offering our animals, and our friends the best that we can.

The housing is used to improve the health, and the comfort, and safety, and well-being of any animal, but often of equal importance is the convenience for the owner.

Having that horse in a place where you can work on it, and knowing were the animal is when you go to round it up to have the training, or whatever session you're having with the horse.

And then let's admit it.

It has an importance in the marketing of horses if you're a professional handler of these animals.

The current state of modern American stable they've gotten to be more beautiful over the years.

They're basically functional like my job as an agricultural engineer is to keep reminding people that it's the horse, and the barn that's the important part.

We have increased areas devoted to human needs, and that's absolutely fine.

Many of those areas are built to a residential standard, but the rest of the building has to be built to a horse standard, which is more of livestock features.

I keep that perspective as the livestock is an occupant.

Is the horse another house pet?

I'd say no, they are companion animals, and they are often family members.

I understand that part, but I'll end with a quick conversation on the horse as a member of our livestock species.

I know that horse people sometimes bristle with this.

They're we're not livestock, we're not pigs, we're not cattle, but the materials of construction that we use in stables are more common to what we would use in other livestock species.

With the moisture loads in the facility it's not a residential construction.

We have a thousand pound animal who defecates on the floor, and urinates on the walls.

We're feeding them dusty materials.

We're bedding them with flammable materials with straw and wood shavings.

So it really is a livestock environment much as we love our horses as companion animals.

And that's, I guess, my job as an agricultural engineer to keep people with a perspective that these barns are a livestock housing, and that they have needs of materials and ventilation, and material movement that look more like a livestock environment to keep everybody happy, owners and the horses.

With that I'll conclude this presentation on important details in horse stable design, and let you know that there is information available about many of those topics and some others here that's written by myself, and a colleague, Jennifer Zajaczkowski.

So you've got some places to go to get some basic information, but I'd be glad to help in the future with additional topics and webinars.

These are available at extension.psu.edu.

There's a whole section on horse facilities there.

Here's my contact information for those of you interested in reaching me.

- [Danielle] All right.

Thank you very much, Dr. Fabian.

I'm gonna go through some questions that we received.

Looking in the chat box I see one from Kevin.

What is an example of manure mechanization?

- [Eileen] An example of manure mechanization could include a number of things.

One are gutter cleaners that are usually positioned along the back wall of a stall.

They would run through the entire side wall of that stable, or barn.

The ability there is it will be covered so that the horses can't step into it, and within that gutter is a flight of chain driven bars that once the manure is pushed into there it would move it out of the barn, and into a vessel, or a storage, and they're more typically used in dairy housing, older dairy barns particularly tie-stall barns.

So the application in horse housing is it would be covered except for a plate that would be pulled open while the stall is being cleaned.

Usually the horse isn't in the stall during this, they could be, and then the manure is put into their soiled bedding, and manure or urine spots, and then it's closed back up.

I've also heard of facilities using them on toward the front of the stall where the stall waste is put toward the front, and the horses simply walk over it, or there's a cover put over it where they walk out of the stall.

Dairy farms are completely open.

The cattle learn to just step over them, but in horse facilities sometimes we make a cover on it.

That's the more common mechanization.

The other one is this pull mechanization.

The other one is something that most people do where they have a conveyance whether it be a pickup truck pulling a cart, or a small tractor pulling a cart that they throw the stall waste out of the stall into that, and then that pickup truck or small tractor pulls it out of the barn, and dumps it into some kind of storage.

Those are the two that come to mind, but it's still usually handpicking of the stall.

I've seen materials that are vacuums that will come into a stall and pickup the soiled spots in the stalls, but those are quite uncommon.

- [Danielle] Our next question we have here is: LED lighting versus fluorescents?

- [Eileen] Yep, LED lighting is even more efficient than fluorescents and even more long lasting, and even more expensive.

It's good lighting, absolutely, so as those are becoming more available, absolutely, they're being used in stables and other barns.

They are cold tolerant, heat tolerant, and they're a very good application that the cost of them right now is probably the largest inhibition, but that's not to say that the cost isn't spread over so many years of use that they aren't cost efficient.

Nice light, nice light, and buying them in strips, and things you can get light into corners that are more difficult to do with the other lighting options.

- [Danielle] Very good.

And then the next question we have on that from the same panel are: Can we small manure spreader direct to fields?

- [Eileen] Yes, see how popular manure is.

It came up as our least popular future topic scene.

Yes, absolutely, you could take a small manure spreader, run that through the aisle of the barn.

A lot of our American barns are what we call center aisle stable where we can move equipment through the middle of that barn, or up to the side of a run-in shed or a shelter.

Yes, you could put right into a manure spreader, and then take that out to a field, and spread it that day.

For nutrient management, another whole topic, we often stockpile manure in order to spread it when the plants will be able to utilize those nutrients rather than spreading on a daily haul on frozen ground, for example, which that's not going to go anywhere, and with the precipitation of that snow or rain it's gonna have much more chance of running off, so back to the nutrient management issues, but, yes, you can definitely put the material into any kind of conveyance, and then move it into the field for spreading, or move it to a short-term storage for when it's more appropriate to spread.

- [Danielle] Perfect.

We've got another question in the Q and A box.

What are your thoughts on box fans attached to outside bars and blowing into the stalls?

- [Eileen] Yeah, box fans people use them to get some air movement over the horse in a stall, and as that objective it satisfies that objective.

One thing I'll warn you on the cheap box fans that we would get at a box store, a Walmart, et cetera, they're not built for agricultural operations, so they're not built to handle the dust and such.

So there is a potential fire hazard, and do be aware of the cord that comes from them being accessed by horses or other pets, or children in the building.

It's not the safest installation, but I understand they do work.

I would rather we build the stable, and manage the stable to have sufficient air movement through that facility, through that stall from the start rather than adding a box fan.

That's always been my preference here using electricity that we could do ventilation naturally.

So how to do that?

How to get natural ventilation air movement through that barn?

If you've already built you're stuck with what you've got, although, you can modify, but putting, for example, doors on both sides of the stall you always have a stall I talked about the central aisle stable.

We have airflow there because we usually have a door with an opening into the central aisle.

We often have tremendous airflow through that central aisle, and the people in the barn think, oh, yeah, this is a really well ventilated stable, but what I encourage people to do is take their lawn chair, and a little magazine or a book to read, or whatever it is you read off of these days, and take your chair go into your horse stall, shut the door, and then just kind of hang out there for an hour.

See how good the airflow is in there.

Make sure you shut the door because your horse is gonna be in there with the door shut, and then just see what's going on, and you'll quickly realize that if good airflow going through the aisle doesn't necessarily go through the stall, also, unless there's two holes in that stall.

By that I mean that there's the grill work, perhaps, in the front of the stall that lets some air in, but musses a way for the air to flow through out a window, or out a door, a screen door that goes to the exterior of the stable you're really not gonna get any airflow in there, so it's gonna be kind of like being in a box that has no airflow.

So the recommendation is to have if your horses are gonna be inside a lot, or inside on warm days is to make sure that you have openings on both sides of the stall, one to the aisle, one to the outside, so that we can get air movement through there.

And if all else fails, and you're not in a situation where that can be had, or can be designed, then we end up with box fans being put there, and they'll blow air for awhile, and the horse can move into that airflow.

You do want to flow the air over the horse's body.

That's where they're warm.

That's where they're putting off the body heat.

- [Danielle] Great, thank you.

And I see real quickly we just got another question.

Eileen, if you don't mind answering one more.

- [Eileen] Yeah, go ahead.

- [Danielle] Will big three foot industrial fans create flow?

- [Eileen] These are probably...

Big three foot industrial fans.

I'm not sure if the question is for just circulating air in the barn, of course, they will, and it ties into the previous question and answer with the box fans attached to the stall surface.

The big three foot diameter fans will move about 10,000 cubic feet of air a minute.

They move quite a bit of air, and you can move them, oh, in the center aisle, so moving air down the aisle.

Sure, you can do that.

Again, I'd rather see this ventilation come built into the structure itself because they are naturally ventilated buildings.

If we're talking about summer trying to get the building open and fresh air moving through.

If we're talking about winter we usually have these buildings closed up fairly tightly.

They can't never be completely closed.

You have to have openings in them for fresh air exchange, stale air out.

So then that three foot fan is just moving around the stale air in the building, and not really providing fresh air.

If my hesitation in answering it now that Steve has clarified this if that fan was gonna be used as an exhaust fan then we're talking about a completely mechanically ventilated building in the winter probably, or summer, and it takes another discussion to get that design not complicated, but we need to have a closed building with pressure control and formal inlets.

So, yes, three foot industrial fans, yes, they can create airflow.

If they're just used as circulation of the barn they just simply move whatever air was on one side of the fan to the other side.

They're not creating any fresh air coming into the building, but they'll move air around.

If their design is an exhaust fan system then we need to have another discussion about that.

Probably for the day if we end up having a ventilation webinar.

Is that clear enough?

Get any size fan you want.

They have four foot fans.

They have five foot fans.

They have six foot fans now.

- [Danielle] Thank you, again, Dr. Fabian, for joining us today to talk about stable design.

We, I'm sure, all appreciate it.

- [Eileen] You're very welcome it was fun.

- [Danielle] Thank you everyone.

Hope you all have a good day.

- [Eileen] Bye everyone.