Housing for horses

So you found a place that’s big enough for both you and your horses, but now what do you do? If there isn’t already a barn on your property, chances are you’ll have to build something.

If you are constructing a new shelter, take into consideration what side the wind most commonly comes from, how much sun a certain location gets, and also how easily it’s accessible with a tractor or a trailer. For a full barn, water and power is necessary, too.

At the very least, any horse shelter should provide wind and weather protection.

“The minimum is two walls and a roof for wind and sun protection, and protection from rain and snow,” says Dannette Taylor, a Post Falls resident and 4-H leader. “Wind is the only thing that gets through their coats and makes them cold. Sun can cause skin cancer just like on us, and rain can cause rain rot.”

Along with daughter Jessica, Taylor keeps two horses on her mother’s property in Post Falls. They set up a 24-foot-by-36-foot metal pole building in which Taylor built two 12-by-12 horse stalls on one end, complete with tall entries for the horses to come and go. Horses can come in here and lie down or move around.

Taylor recommends that portions of any barn have translucent panels to allow natural lighting, “or it will be too dark,” she adds. “They need light for psychological reasons just like we do.”

Horse trainer Jennifer Holmes owns Rocking Horse Training in Otis Orchards, where her facility is built around a row of shedlike structures.

“It’s an older, converted shed row setup, like a bunch of stalls hooked up together,” says Holmes. “I turned it into a setup for individual care, so each horse has its own individual area. They have a stall with a fairly long run.”

Multiple horses may not always get along.

“If there is more than one horse, you need to have areas where each horse can eat separately, so each horse can eat comfortably,” says Holmes. “Some horses eat faster than other horses, or some horses are on different feed.”

Another consideration is a good roof. Holmes prefers roofs that are pitched with one low side, to allow easy water runoff. Adequate drainage is a must to cut back on mud and standing water, which can hurt the horses’ feet. Holmes keeps water off shelter floors by elevating the ground with gravel and covering it with large rubber stall mats cut to size.

You always want the entry for the horse to be on the high side, so the horse doesn’t have to walk under the rain or snow runoff,” Holmes adds.

Taylor agrees. “The horse likes to stand in the doorway and look out,” she says.

“You’ve got to have wind protection,” she says. “The wind gets to them, and that’s what’s going to make them cold.”

Feed the horses inside and keep any stored food off the ground and out of reach of curious equines. Some horses are quite the escape artists and if they get into a bag of feed, they can eat themselves into serious, even lethal stomach problems.

To provide some additional horse shelters, Holmes and her husband are installing two portable horse stalls, made of sheet metal siding. Taylor has even seen people convert storage sheds or RV carports to horse shelters.

Stalls built with 2-by-6 boards are better than plywood because a horse can kick through plywood, Taylor adds.

How much it’ll set you back to construct a shelter for your horse, varies wildly.

“Just basic shelter can cost $100 to $200 to build,” says Taylor. “Something bigger can cost up to $15,000.”