Walkers, I think I’m about to cave! Please tell me my options!?

Going by this thread walkers are a bit like Marmite and really you need something that all of your clients will be happy to use as a turnout alternative.

The bad things about turn out pens are that they get bored easily so you either have to give plenty of hay or you accept that rugs will be ripped and they will play/fight more so possibility of more injuries.

Also if they are only going out for a couple of hours then that means you will probably have to do the turn out and bring in more if your clients are all DIY and at work during the day. If it is only going to be used as a short term option then this might be ok though.

Personally, I would much prefer a turn out pen that I could put a few big hay nets in that I could leave them out for a good five hours or so. I have done this in the past and the horses were quite happy with this for a couple of months when the wet ground is at its worst say for Jan and Feb.
 
I have no idea why people are so anti walker, if you work professionally with horses in my experience then they are pretty much essential! I also have never seen any of the horrific injuries that people often come up with and bearing in mind at times I was putting 40 horses a day on the walker I would have thought I would have seen it. I actually saw more horses die swimming and I swam a lot less horses than put on a walker!

Personally for me now on a yard with deep clay land it is a godsend to have a walker. We have no school so during the week, I pop mine on while I muck out. When I had got the light I would do the same then go for a quick ride. He has multiple leg issues from past injuries (had never been on a walker). He is fine on the walker, we have a huge one so they are not constantly on the turn and it is easy to change direction without taking them off!
 
If i had my own yard I'd have a walker - a decent sized one and with a roof if pos. My 2 have turn out in a small trash paddock right now and although they'll wander between hay piles in the dry-ish bit, they seem to spend most the day hanging out by the gate. It's not really exercise!

My mare is always quick to tell you if she isn't happy and would self load into the walker at my old yard. That one was a bit smaller than my ideal, but was invaluable for helping with fitness.
 
Walkers, like anything, have the potential to cause injury. Either through accident or potentially over-use (repetitive strain type situation).

I’m not sure if any formal research is published but it wouldn’t surprise me, if a Horse was on a walker for hours on end, day in day out, that this could cause orthopaedic issues. But then that is the way the lazy human is using the walker rather than the walker per se. And some yards do rely to heavily on the walker for exercise/fittening.

I have actually had a horse badly injured on a walker. Sufficiently so that it was a large factor in a LOU claim. But the root cause for that was livery yard negligence.

I am still happy to use a walker as a part of my horses overall management
 
Laafet said:
I have no idea why people are so anti walker,
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but it is only on the walker for half an hour or so. If we are talking about keeping horses off saturated grass fields what does it do the rest of the day and all of the night? it might be exercised for another hour but then it just stands in it's box. With suitably set up hard surface areas at least they can wander around all day which must break the day up for them.
 
paddy555 said:
but it is only on the walker for half an hour or so. If we are talking about keeping horses off saturated grass fields what does it do the rest of the day and all of the night? it might be exercised for another hour but then it just stands in it's box. With suitably set up hard surface areas at least they can wander around all day which must break the day up for them.
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But they tend not to wander around all day; they stand around looking miserable, wanting to come in. If they are going to do that, then they'd rather do it in their stable, thanks very much (I'm paraphrasing for my horses here...). That is my experience with all-weather turnout (which I have and use, BTW). Which is why the very next Big Thing I'm going to do on the yard is get a walker installed.
 
Cortez said:
But they tend not to wander around all day; they stand around looking miserable, wanting to come in. If they are going to do that, then they'd rather do it in their stable, thanks very much (I'm paraphrasing for my horses here...). That is my experience with all-weather turnout (which I have and use, BTW). Which is why the very next Big Thing I'm going to do on the yard is get a walker installed.
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Totally agree, I cannot get up to the yard until 5.30pm and he is stood there begging to come in! I am sure he spends most of his day stood at the gate this time of the year and he's a Connemara. When it snowed, he took one look outside and didn't want to go out.
 
paddy555 said:
but it is only on the walker for half an hour or so. If we are talking about keeping horses off saturated grass fields what does it do the rest of the day and all of the night? it might be exercised for another hour but then it just stands in it's box. With suitably set up hard surface areas at least they can wander around all day which must break the day up for them.
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What sort of sized area are you thinking of? It is not a small cost to do all weather turnout and if you have a number of horses then you can’t exactly lump them all in a small area together can you?

Plus IME they don’t wander around all day. They have a roll and a mooch/kick up heels for a few minutes then they either stand and eat a Haynet or get into mischief!

I agree it’s nice for them to have a change of scene but I don’t think it’s financially viable to make enough all weather turnout on a multi horse yard that is more beneficial than a Horse walker.
 
The only difference between standing in a stable and standing on hard concrete that I can see is that with a stable they stay dry. Mine is in at the moment, our fields are saturated. I'll hand walk her later with a pick of grass, she politely asked that we didn't go for too long a walk this morning as there was debris flying around.
 
Cortez said:
But they tend not to wander around all day; they stand around looking miserable, wanting to come in. If they are going to do that, then they'd rather do it in their stable, thanks very much (I'm paraphrasing for my horses here...). That is my experience with all-weather turnout (which I have and use, BTW). Which is why the very next Big Thing I'm going to do on the yard is get a walker installed.
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I can only paraphrase for mine but they don't just stand there wanting to come in. Ours spend all day like this and wander, go to talk to others in the next yard, come and talk to us, wander into the stables to eat and wander out again. I don't just chuck them out in a rectangular turnout area and leave them. If I did I have no doubt they would just stand at the gate all day. They often change yards during the day as we bring a couple in to ride, or one in to do it's feet or train etc. Definitely no ripped rugs and the youngest doing this is 2.
It's not size of turn out area that matters but interest. If I was going to use a rectangle for example I would put a hard track around the edge and leave the middle as grass. Hay dotted around the edge and they would wander around similar to a mini paddock paradise.
A couple of my "yards" for want of a better word, are basically hard tracks with shelters and standing. By the time they get to one end they have to get back to the other. At least they are walking and moving rather than just standing in a stable,

I didn't set it up to have "all weather turnout areas" as such. I took what we had that was hard and divided it up into sections "yards" and put in a few gates. This was done cheaply several years ago after we had wet fields and like many kept the horses in all day and just turned them out into a wood chip ring for an hour to exercise which didn't work that well as they were in the stables so much.

My latest walkway for example involved the garden. The stable/yard was on one side of the house yet the other side was a large hard area with plenty of grass on banks to nibble. In the way was the garden. There was a sunken concrete path through the garden. Now there is electric fencing each side and a horse wanders along here day and night to his "turnout" area. No damage to the garden and the horse gets a lot of walking.
We have 10 and they go out in one group of 3, 2 groups of 2 and 3 singles.
It won't suit everyone but it does work a lot better than leaving them in a stable and it just took a bit of imagination to get it to work for them.
 
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