Timber Kick Boards or Rubber Matting?

[Kenzo]

I need a padded cell for Mackenzie

On a serious note though, what do you feel is best and possibly the cheapest way of protecting the walls and well as preventing your horse injuring it's self when kicking out at the walls?

Am I right in thinking you can put the rubber floor matting up the sides or is there a specific type of wall mat for this purpose? or would it be better errecting some timber kick boards, having said that, is the likely hood of him sticking a hind foot through going to cause an actual injury rather than nothing being there at all?

Suggestions would be lovely, thank you.

 

[a1icem]

Hi

You can get special rubber wall matting, its slightly thinner than floor matting and its harder too. I think you have to be careful about it sagging!

I have kickboards in my stables and one of my horses (16h 4/yo warmblood) likes to double barrel the back wall. She made a few holes in it before finally going the whole way through a few months ago, we had to patch it up with bits of wood we had which has worked quite well! If I could afford it I would definitely have the rubber matting on top of my kickboards to stop this happening again!

My trainer had a horse who liked to kick walls, her stables were breeze block and she ended up buying boxing ring mats and lining his stable with them!

 

[Kenzo]

Thanks for your feedback alice.

Yeah I used to have the kickboards in my own stables before I moved to a livery yard but they came with stables as standard, I didnt actually have a horse that used to do it back then, so I can't really decide what would be best. I'm guessing from ones i used to have in my other stables, that he'd smash through them pretty quickly judging from last nights performace.

But someone else has suggested the mats over the kick boards as well....an expensive job by the sounds of things, I'm hoping he'll settle out of doing it once he's in on night as part of the yards routine but until then, I'd like to think about what I can do to prevent any possible injuries.

Boxing ring mats, wonder how much they are?

 

[a1icem]

I forgot to say she kicked through mine without back shoes on! She didn't ever hurt herself, however I think this was more down to luck than anything else!

She has stopped doing it so much now, I just have my 2 horses at home and she used to do it when she was left on her own when I went to a show or something with the other one, so i think she has got used to it now!

She also did it when I was feeding her in the morning, but she has since stopped doing this as I used to launch all my old broken feed buckets at her stable when she did it! It may sound a little mean, but she didn't like the loud noise they made hitting her door! And it hasn't affected her in any other way!

As for the boxing ring mats I'm not sure, but I do know the horse was worth a LOT of money so no doubt they would have been expensive! You could always try ebay though!