Flooring options for unconcreted stables? Sorry for boring post!

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Juni141

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Hi HHOers,

Sorry, probably the most boring post of all time!!

My new stables have rough stone floors, hardcore rather than cobble. I am trying to think of some options to make them easy to muck out, hygienic and warm. They are large stables (probably 18ft x 16ft) which is great as they will be in a lot over the winter as the weather is so horrendous here but obviously makes any flooring very expensive. Has anybody got any suggestions?!

Yard owner used to deep litter them with straw bed. I ideally don't want to use straw as my mare eats it and it makes you stink which isn't going to make me popular in the office when I muck out on my way to work!

Rubber matting going to be very expensive (unless anyone has found somewhere cheap?) but may be my only option?

TIA!

TGIF!!
 
How rough are they? As in with a good decent bed are they likely to get through to it? Where i went on camp had similar sounding floors and with a good bed it didn't seem a problem. Rubber would be the ideal but having just looked at it myself the cost is a bit eye watering!

ETA just as thought but could you save money by just putting rubber matting down in part of the stable where you will put the bedding?
 
Hi! I have earth floors at home & I have rubber matting & use shavings/cardboard. I haven't had any problems with this arrangement, but it was expensive to buy the mats!
A friend has earth floors & uses straw - they're more deep litter but actually they don't smell like a straw bed would on concrete or mats as the wee drains away through the floor!
If anyone has miraculously found a cheaper mat source please share as I could do with some more!! ;)
 
I think if it were me, I'd put 3 rubber mats along the front so the bedding didn't escape out of the door, and I could sweep it back from under hay/water and then deep litter the rest with aubiose or similar. most mats are 6x4ft so you'd have a 4ft clear area.

I used to have a large stable without a concrete floor and that's what worked for me. i loved it actually, and would swap my small concrete box for one like that in a heartbeat :)
 
I had these type of floors in two large stables .
Straw worked fantastically very little smell we skipped out and kept the bed level and mucked out once a year .
But we stopped using straw we deep littered with shavings this was good but awful to muck out at the end if the year .
We then need to have no deep litter to maintain as spore free environment as poss so we laid rubber mats and put shavings on top and mucked out as normal .
It was a very wet winter and we got mud seeping up it was a pain so I had floors laid
 
You could even it out with a layer of sub-base ( type1 or type 2 I can't remember which it is) then just use thick bedding and a mat for hay/water area. Should drain really well.
 
I think rubber matting at the front sounds most sensible and keeps the cost down.

It sounds like straw may be the best solution after all, if the pee can drain and its being deep littered. Would the wood pellets work in this case? I wonder whether it might compact too much? Same with shavings?

Thank you very much for your replies, much appreciated.

:)
 
Have a look at stable comfort mats. These can be laid straight onto floors that are not concrete, but are a permanent rubber floor.

They come in two parts

I have had them down for 13 years, and apart from the odd scuff mark, they are as good as new

http://www.stablecomfort.co.uk/

ETA

Its not cheap, but it is a permanent floor that doesn't require concrete etc putting down first and I can vouch for its durability
 
Long ago went away from stables to large pens. When we moved farms there were sheds ,hard core, or earth bottomed , so made large pens again [ 2 horses each share pens approx 15x30 feet in size] NO MUCKING OUT! Straw blown in by machine , [previously just rolled big bales through the pens , but its hard work] ,builds up to 16 inches or so, Mechanically mucked out ,thank the Lord for our Mattbro, then start again. Why make things difficult? WE also have ring feeders and big bale haylage , all mechanically put in ,and removed to cattle when gone stale.If your horse eats straw, ad lib hay/haylage will stop it. Have never found they get fat this way- they know they dont need to garge, as there is always food infront of them.
So, no need to alter floors- save yourself money and work.
 
We have earth floors in three stables and concrete in one, we will take the concrete floor up eventually. I would suggest that you put good clean sand in on top of the hardcore, which helps with drainage and also stops the stones possibly digging into the horse. We have used straw and bedmax shavings on our earth floors.
 
We have earth floors. I use a deep layer of sawdust with shavings on top.
It is skipped out daily and I dig out the wet when it comes to the surface
 
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