What Are the Proper Living Quarters for a Horse?

A well kept horse makes a happy horse, but future equine owners must first understand the space and living conditions horses need. To provide proper living quarters, your horse will need access to an outside area for grazing, as well as a type of accessible sheltered building for safety and housing. Under the ideal living conditions, your horse will live a long and healthy life in your care.

  1. Stalls

    • Stalls, sometimes referred to as boxes, are large enclosed spaces inside a barn where a horse can sleep, eat and relax during the night or inclement weather. Typical stalls are a 12-by-12 foot box with tall sides, and often have iron bars to separate neighboring horses from snapping at one another. For a draft horse, a larger box may be necessary to accommodate its larger size, even as large as 16-by-16 feet. For the smaller ponies, an 8-by-8-foot box stall may be big enough to provide plenty of room and comfort.

    Barns

    • Barns, sometimes called stables, come in all shapes and sizes, and no two barns are exactly alike. For horses, barns should provide not only food storage and a place to hang up saddles, bridles and halters, but also a place where horses can be released into stalls overnight, or during an emergency or inclement weather. The number of horses in a stable should depend upon the number of stalls available. Overcrowding of barns can be a hazard to horses and humans, and also can cause poor living conditions for the animals.

    Pastures

    • Green pastures are not a luxury, but a necessity in the horse world. Pastures provide horses with a means to get exercise, socialize with other horses and obtain the bulk of daily forage a horse needs. Pastures that are large and can accommodate two or more horses at one time are the optimum choice, as horses can eat lots of grass when released outside for hours at a time. Ideally, your horse should be given more than three hours of pasture time a day to stay fit and healthy, and the more grass a horse consumes, the less hay roughage you will need to feed it.

    Sheds

    • Sheds, or run-in shelters, usually are three-sided buildings with a roof on top that provides emergency shelter to horses when caught out in inclement weather. Unlike stalls, a run-in shed should be long and wide enough to accommodate all the horses comfortably that are in the pasture. In very large pastures, two or three sheds could be erected at different spots so horses have quick access to shelter when a storm hits. Some horse owners have even used run-in shelters instead of barns with some success, and simply add wall hanging buckets inside the shed for feeding grain.