Equitopia joins up with Lisa Fay and Georgie Welge from Master Saddle Fitters International to demonstrate what to look for in a Professional saddle fitting. Don't forget - a correctly fitting saddle in integral to your horse's soundness.

Read more: Equitopia - What to Expect in a Saddle Fit Evaluation (5:16)

Performance horses that are out and about can bring home more than just ribbons. The ultimate success in a competition depends on making smart choices and establishing and following sensible protocols.

It is not easy to juggle the challenges of training horses and running a busy barn at home while also getting out on the road and competing against your peers. Horses that are working at different performance levels have very different requirements in their daily care.

Addressing the special needs of competition horses is an essential component of ensuring they are fit and healthy and at peak levels of performance when the time comes to showcase their talents in the arena. To optimize these horses’ care, it makes sense to plan your barn design to factor in how to best manage these needs. The goal is to make sure these noble athletes are kept as happy and content as possible while also maintaining good horse keeping for the equines that stay home.

Performance horses that are out and about can bring home more than just ribbons. Contagious diseases are just one concern. Injuries, soreness, stress, and anxiety are others. Mitigating the risks associated with these issues is a number one priority for the trainer and horse owners. The ultimate success of any equine business enterprise or individual rider’s success in competition depends on making smart choices and establishing and following sensible protocols.

If the barn building has not yet begun the opportunity to cater for the requirements of the competition horses is one of those smart decisions. There are many barn designs that can accomplish a better daily routine and care experience for all the horses in the barn, whether they are in retirement or winging their way over puissance fences at weekends.

Here are a few ideas to help you navigate the options available to make the best choice to suit your needs and budget.

The ‘West Wing’ Option

Building your competition horses their own ‘wing’ is a great design choice.

In days gone by large manor houses and estates would often add an adjunct building to their main structure for guests to enjoy in adjoining quarters, the so called, “East or West Wing.”

The wing(s) of a house was usually a subordinate part to the main structure that provided privacy between family and guests. The wing would be either adjoining that main structure or be connected to it by an esplanade, pergola, or similar structure.

When it comes to keeping competition horses the idea of maintaining a different area specifically designed for their particular needs is a good one, and it can be accomplished in a myriad of ways.

A simple method is to set shedrow barns at an angle away from each other. This is a budget friendly way to achieve the goal of providing space between ‘home’ and competition horses.

Other options include building a separate show barn altogether or adding a center aisle row of stalls either in a second row or at a right angle within a large barn.

Whichever way you choose to attain the separation of the resident equines, the net result will be a great benefit to both them and their caregivers.

Added Advantages

Here are the many advantages of adding a separate wing to accommodate competition horses:

• Quarantine practices are made simple for keeping horses that go back and forth to show grounds apart from their compatriots left at home.
• Competition horses’ needs for extra feed rations can easily be implemented throughout the day without disturbance to other stabled horses’ routines.
• Tack and equipment can be stored separately to ‘home’ horses.
• Extra security can be added to the special wing such as video monitoring and passcode entrances.
• Additional electrical outlets can be placed by each stall together with extra brackets and places to hang haynets/IV fluids and hydration care.
• The ‘wing’ can be fitted with fly control and fire protection systems.
• Special storage for blankets/tack, high end exercise or medical treatment equipment can be set up handy for daily use within the space of the ‘wing’ without worry of it being tampered with or damaged in a busier barn area.
• A ‘show’ tack room, working day equipment area, specialist grooming and bathing stalls with heat lamps etc. and feed room can be incorporated in the build. The assigned tack room will make it easy to load the show trailer and secure and access the specialist and expensive tack and equipment that may be needed for competition. While the feed room will help ensure no cross contamination or misuse with other hay supplies, grain rations, or supplements on the property.
• It is straightforward to site specialist footing turn out paddocks or lanai’s close to the competition barn separate from the main pastures on the property used for ‘home’ horses or a hot walker can be added.
• A separate ‘show’ barn can be sited close to the home on the property for security and monitoring and ease of access.

Read more: Barn Design and Management Tips For Competition Horses

CLICK HERE FOR AN EIE BOARDING CHECKLIST

by Nikki Alvin-Smith for Horizon Structures

There is nothing easy about running a horse boarding barn. Difficult horses and difficult horse boarders can make daily life miserable for both management and staff at any facility. The development of a new horse boarding business often necessitates a major capital outlay for suitable stabling facilities. The notion that once a beautiful barn is built, the equine and human counterpart clients will exist in harmony under its roof is often more a fairy tale than reality.

There are many reasons that things take a wrong turn and life as a horse boarding barn manager becomes a nightmare. Difficult horses can make restless bedfellows for their compatriot equine residents with their persistent neighing, circling, rearing, or kicking habits. Cribbing or windsucking behavior from an individual equine can wreak havoc on the pristine new wood structure and can quickly be copied by other impressionable equines.

Horses that are left to themselves too much of the time will become bored and sometimes behave badly, and when their owners don’t show up to exercise them or work with them on training even a good horse can turn into a bad actor.

It takes just one obnoxious horse owner to make daily life miserable for the staff and manager of the equestrian facility. This could be a client that makes persistent phone calls and engages busy farm staff in longwinded chats full of unwanted and unwarranted advice on how their horse must be cared for is a routine nobody wants to endure. Or a client that constantly shows up after hours wanting access to ride and use the facilities. Then there are the ‘aisle hoggers’ who leave their horses attached to crossties for long periods often leaving them unattended into the bargain. And don’t forget the ‘help myself’ borrowers that upset everyone by using other people’s equipment without asking or the folks that don’t bother to clean up after their horses by rolling up hose pipes, sweeping hoof pickings, or even pick up poop piles from the aisleway.

To get ahead of these horse boarding problems and others like them there are some surprisingly simple methods that can be employed to minimize and mitigate the risk of negative issues arising at the boarding barn.

Clever Barn Design Tricks and Tips

Smart design of the horse barn can help defray points of contention during daily horse care. Here are a few key considerations to bear in mind during the planning of your new barn project:

• Add extra points of access to the center aisle barn midway along the long side as well as at gable ends of the building. This will minimize the need for horses to be led past each other for turnout or riding and provides the added bonus of being able to work in the aisleway mucking stalls or cleaning up without blocking use of the entire barn.
• Avoid crossties in aisleways. A grooming/bath stall placed either centrally or at the end of the barn allows owners to go directly from tacking and grooming to outside riding and back again without constant walking back and forth in the aisle disturbing horses at rest.
• Place tack rooms close to grooming stalls. Keep ‘in house’ lesson tack and equipment in a separate space to boarders’ storage areas. Add a heavy-duty combo lock to the tack rooms and automatic closure to the doors so the tack rooms cannot be inadvertently left open. Provide all horse boarders with a lockable tack box or storage unit so they can secure their belongings.
• Make dividing stall walls of solid lumber rather than grilled halfway up, high enough to deter horses from being able to sniff nose to nose over the top board and sturdy enough to withstand kicking with adequate kick walls.
• Keep supplies such as hay/bedding under lock and key if possible in a separate storage structure.
• Build a secondary smaller barn that can be used for quarantine purposes or to house horses that are bad actors.
• Offer more than one style of horse keeping method by having more than one barn. For example, a barn with Dutch doors to the exterior and a ‘calving’ style paddock or lanai may work well for retiree horses or rehab purposes while a high-strung performance horse may do better with a standard stall and daily handling and turnout in a larger paddock or treadmill/hot walker for exercise.
• Have a gated entrance to the property that can be secured with a passcode if necessary to avoid unwanted visitors after regular business hours.
• Offer training services for clients’ horses that require behavioral management to improve the horse’s understanding of how to behave in a safe manner and similarly offer to train the client if necessary. Consistency in horse handling techniques is essential for a successful outcome in any training endeavor.

Make Good Rules and Enforce Them

The method a horse boarding barn is managed varies greatly across the industry. Rough board, partial board, or full board can make the business challenging to manage when all are offered in one facility. For example, if the barn rules and terms and conditions of leasing a stall at the barn state that the barn management will be responsible for all turnout schedules and horse handling back and forth to pastures, executing deworming and fecal worm count procedures, it is not helpful to have one or two ‘rough’ horse boarders coming and going as they please and not subject to the same rules for their horses’ care.

Read more: Difficult Horses. Difficult Boarders