To bank or not to bank??

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tilly49

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Hi,

My husband and I are having a debate over banks in a stable. He feels i dont need them as my mare is 6years old and 16.2 in a 12x12 stable which seems big enough for her to not get stuck. Others at the yard hove little banks, some large and some non at all. They are all various sized horses. what does anyone else think. To bank or not to bank??
 
to be honist unless the banks are a good size and height it wont make much diffrentce as if you think about it when the horse rolls and say at the size yours is the banks would need to be 3 foot hight to be of any use
 
Unless your horse likes a pillow, I wouldn't bother.

Banks take up stable space, collect dust and need to be pretty large to be of practical use.
 
adamntitch said:
to be honist unless the banks are a good size and height it wont make much diffrentce as if you think about it when the horse rolls and say at the size yours is the banks would need to be 3 foot hight to be of any use
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This. Save the money and buy the ribbed rubber strips (Fieldsguard do them) that go about a third of the way up the wall if you want an effective anti roll aid. A thrashing hoof of a cast horse will demolish any bank in a moment, so no point. And young fit horses are much less likely to get cast, its normally the oldies who are much more likely to.
 
I have a 17.2hh in a 12x 14ft stable and I bank. They are about 2ft high and 1.5ft wide at the base, and solidly built out of shavings / rapport.. and they just prevent him lying right up against the wall / rolling and getting cast and indeed, knocking his hocks as he walks round his box.

In my experience, if a horse is prone to getting cast, the size of the stable makes little difference. Some horses like lying down against walls, others prefer to sleep in the middle of their beds but banks offer more protection than from just the risk of getting cast IMO...

As for the dust thing, my banks get pulled down, one a week and replaced with new bedding so this isn't a problem.
 
I don't bank up the bed. I have a 14.3/15hh in a 12ft x 16ft stable, bedded on shavings. The bed only covers one side of the stable and TBH the stable is so huge that if he lies down/rolls in the middle which he often does), the banks would need to be enormously wide to have any chance of stopping him getting cast. So I don't bother, other than to keep fresh shavings on so I can pull them down onto the bed daily.
 
I've always been a bank person,medium sized generally but this winter decided to try without. Had horse for years & never found any evidence of him rolling too close to walls, I bed on straw with a base in decent sized stable. Wish I'd ditched the banks years ago! No more faffing about with turning them over or tidying them, horse used to back upto the one behind him & hide poos in it! Quick skip out & tidy & I'm done!
 
I do but only quite small but really packed tight to keep the clean bedding out of the dirtier stuff. So when I put a new bale of shavings in all the old gets pulled down and new made into banks and a bit taken down each day to replace whats taken out.

One of my ponies used to get cast but banks made no difference so he has to wear a anti cast roller never happened since. I do like a bed with banks though think it looks nicer for some reason.
 
Banks only prevent a horse getting cast if they're over about 3 foot high and solid, anything less than that is just to make it look pretty :D
 
Funnily enough i was thinking this yesterday, why others bank.
I always bank up my straw so i have clean to pull down the next day and by friday there are no banks ready for a straw top up at the weekend :)
 
I bank out of habit and to 'store' clean bedding, my banks are about 3 foot high though as I just prefer big banks. I do pull them down every day so no real dust issue :)
 
whizzer said:
I've always been a bank person,medium sized generally but this winter decided to try without. Had horse for years & never found any evidence of him rolling too close to walls, I bed on straw with a base in decent sized stable. Wish I'd ditched the banks years ago! No more faffing about with turning them over or tidying them, horse used to back upto the one behind him & hide poos in it! Quick skip out & tidy & I'm done!
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I'm very old school - always done good banks with a shaving or straw bed. I love a deep bed of straw and huge banks. However, after 30 years of doing this, we got badly snowed in a couple of years ago, for about 3 weeks, so the straw stocks were rapidly running out. I ended up having to pull the banks down to use the straw for them to lie on. I couldn't believe how much easier it was to do the beds, and as my hubby has to do the yard, schoolrun, run a business etc when I'm away at work, I never put them up again to make life easier for him.

If we go away, they go on livery to my friend's yard, where they have huge beds and banks, and I do look wistfully at them, but their stables are a bit smaller and don't have rubber mats.
 
Toffee_monster said:
Funnily enough i was thinking this yesterday, why others bank.
I always bank up my straw so i have clean to pull down the next day and by friday there are no banks ready for a straw top up at the weekend :)
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:D I thought I was the only person in the world that did this.. My boy has big banks on a Monday usually small to none by the weekend, ready for a big top up... :) I think its a brill way of managing a bed!
 
I never believed in banking, because common sense told me that nothing but some SERIOUS banking would actually stop a horse getting cast - but I'm always open to being corrected, so when my friend told me something that seemed equally common sense, I felt I could accept it :)

She suggested that it's not the physical barrier that helps so much as the appearance of one - the horse sees the banks and takes it as a cue not to get too close to the walls.

Now it might be nonsense, or not - but it made more sense to me than the obviously daft suggestion that banks physically stop a horse getting cast - so I'm happy with that. I tried it after finding some suspicious holes in the walls (at rolling height) and we've not had any since (though perhaps he just learned his lesson!).

Anyway, that's another reason you might use them :)
 
I'm another who doesn't bank, not only would you need huge banks to make any difference, but my view is my horse is stuck in a small enough space for a long enough time as it is without my significantly reducing this space further
 
Hoooooooooorah!!!

I've been put under serious pressure to add bedding to my rubber mats... one of the main arguments (of various spurious ones) being banks stop casting..

my horse is a very happy 27yo TB still in light work...

but he hasn't been able to roll over for about the last 10 yrs due to encroaching age... so physically unable to 'cast' himself

has never been cast, despite having been stabled without banks for several years (though he mainly lives out now - just in at the mo due to treachorous ground conditions)

but guess what, great commotion on the yard a couple of weeks ago, resulting in me having to 'uncast' a horse who has huge straw banks!!

why was she cast? because she'd got stuck at 45 degrees on the banks and couldn't get her legs down far enough to release herself, or push against the wall...

however, as at most yards, the experts would have it otherwise
(not a single qualification between them, and no genuine 'industry' experience)
- whereas, I having both, am obviously clueless :confused:
 
Like others have said, I use my banks pretty much as a store for fresh bedding during the week :)

I hadn't heard about banks collecting dust - think I might turn it more often now! I generally have a solid bank along the bank wall, with fresh pellets chucked up on top.
 
Shy lies down on one size of the stable, and poos on the other, always the same. So i just bank along the side he lies on to make it more comfy for him. isn't that sad ! :o
 
I have not used banks for years. However, I do make up enough wood pellets to last me for the week and put these down one side of the stable but only for an easy life during the week.

My bed is very thick soft matting with 3" deep wood pellet bed over half the stable and is very quick and easy to do - skip out every day and take the wet out on Stinky twice a week and Farra every other day as she is a very very wet mare.
 
My old school pony club upbringing will not let me have a stable without big banks, all completely level and built up by using the back of the shavings fork to firm them up. This is regardless of how useful they are or are not :D I think I'm too old to change now...
 
Not sad at all. I deep litter and use the banks as storage so pull the banks down to 'top up' the bed and then put the new shavings as two new banks.

Mare does have a rather large stable though and she is really tidy and poos on the edge of the bed and wees in one place religously ...... which is making my deep littering look like a bit of a mountain but hey ho!

Adding to what someone else said about the snow and not being able to get bedding in which i thought was a good idea as its forecast this weekend although plan to do a shavings run tomorrow.

Mare also likes to use one of the banks as a cushion so that ones a bit bigger ;)
 
I only have small banks but thats purely because I think a stable looks odd without banks.
My boys on rubber matting with a couple of inches of bedding.
 
My mare always pees round the edge of her stable, so I end up digging the banks up trying to get the wet out - I have given them up this winter and life is a lot easier.....they do look nice though
 
Antw23uk said:
Mare also likes to use one of the banks as a cushion so that ones a bit bigger ;)
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My girl does this too, always see a dent where her head had rested.
I make small banks more out of habit i guess, plus my liveries seem to think you need them so their horses get them. But mine i'm making smaller, esp where she poos right in the middle every night so doesn't have the cleanest bed to lie on being 16.3 and rather long!
 
The only time I have really used a bank was over the summer when my mare was really ill with choke/pneumonia in the 24 hours before we took her to the Dick vets I put an enourmas bank on the side she was lying on as a cushion and support for her as she was exhausted, also due to her poor breathing I didn't want her lying out flat so used it to keep her up on her sternum, otherwise I find they get in the way when I'm lifting the bed
 
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