What facilities would you put into your perfect yard?

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tootsietoo

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Due to our landlord developing the barns adjacent to our house, we are having a pigsty converted to provide stables and storage for our house. I have to agree a specification with them quite soon, and I'm going to try to put in a few things to make my life a bit easier!

At the moment, all I can think of is having one box as a wash down/grooming area with heat lamps for drying off, and also a hot tap. I'm thinking about matting, lighting, all that sort of thing, and just wondered if anyone has designed a yard recently and has any top tips for other useful things to put in.

At the moment we have a hunter and two hairy ponies, and how we use the yard will evolve over the next 10 years or so as the children get older, depending what they are into!

TIA!
 
A good amount of storage space for each person/horse. Rugs/brushes/lotions and potions seem to take a lot of space. Also maybe a locker for me so I don't have to cart hat and hi viz around in the back of the car.
 
Would agree on the fall on the stable floor for drainage. Mats I think are a fantastic help. Storage boxes outside each stable for rugs etc is really helpful too :)
 
We did the same thing to one of our old cattle barns, built three stables a storage area and a tack/feed room in, wash down room, which has a shower and high plug points for clippers and hopefully one day the heat lamps, and a rug room, this has plenty of ceiling hooks for drying rugs in winter, a couple of storage heaters and also the best thing of all, the washing machine, I got an old industrial one, so no more do I have to send my rugs away, and they get washed when they get dirty rather than festering in the corner until summer!
Good luck with the conversion, we had great fun ( and a few arguements!) doing it.
 
thanks, all really helpful responses. A rug room is a great idea bluecat. We have a small space for a tack room which will have a good security door on it, so perhaps if I organised it well I could fit in a rack for rugs and a heater. Rug storage is important isn't it, mine all live on the floor/on the hay/over the feed bins at the moment!

btw, were your arguments with your OH or your landlord?!
 
Might sound silly but concreting (or something similar) the entrances to your fields! A necessity in my eyes!
 
not silly at all, I wouldn't have thought of that. I have got a concreted area by the gate at the moment and I take it for granted, I wouldn't have thought to put one down by the new gate.
 
Matting, automatic water troughs in stables, washroom, drying room (horses) warm drying room for rugs, washing machine, tumble dryer, floodlit menage for schooling and another for jumping with jumps and grids left up always, round pen, horse walker, good grazing, post and rails all round and rounded off corners to fields, safe hacking, safe roads, gallops, cross country course, heated tackroom....
 
Turnout paddocks as well as riding paddocks for winter months. was area with horse shower. Storage areas for all liveries. insurance spec secured tack room. Mounting block! Ideally an indoor.
 
I designed and made my own perfect yard, but I'm not sure everyone else would see it as their perfection!

All the same, the top of my list went like this .... very large stables (min 20 x 15 feet) with brick piers half way along the longest walls so they could be halved in an emergency with gates that we bought specifically. Then, if we have a colic or something, a horse can have a friend nearby but not in the stable or we could have a safe area to stand behind without opening the door every two minutes. As it happens, we split the boxes to store hay when it's first cut and still can't be stacked tightly, so it was a handy addition to the yard. I also have a paddock that's only accessed via two sets of locked gates where the horses spend their nights out. Safer and sounder.
I added tie rings everywhere, dozens of them, to every wall we built. It's incredible how handy they are when anchored in walls - we lock barrows and all sorts to them now. We also have so many places to hang haynets it's easy to keep horses busy and moving about when they're out at night in winter with hay. They don't stand about shivering after eating everything in an hour, they go in search of more instead. We also have the stable doors open and they can come and go at will, often standing in one stable as a group with no squabbling and taking it in turns to lie down naturally. That might not work for everyone, but my animals have always enjoyed sharing a box so long as the door is open.

High rooves are the one thing I cocked up on. Mine are only about eight foot at the back and I wish they were higher. The clear rooflights we built in are making it feel airy, but I just wish we'd added a foot or two to the overall height. Big windows (which I did add, after much arguing with the council who didn't want any windows!) are a great bonus, as they can be filled in if needs be - but you can't open up a brick wall later if you don't add them now!
 
Def a rug room. We have ours in with the boiler and have proper rug racks to hang wet rugs on. Preferably, if we had the room, we would have shelving too for rugs to b put on neatly. Currently our rug room is also a tackroom but we are seriously short of space bit eventually we are going to have proper stables built and a separate tack room with sink, wash machine for horse rugs and boots etc. Mayb a dryer too. Meat hook for tack cleaning and special cupboard/ chest for boots and saddle cloth.
A solarium/ wash box would b lovely! With hot water!
A covered horse walker if no indoor school as do useful wen school cant b used.
Outdoor school with mirrors and a special shed right next to it for jumps and poles with easy access into school.
Muck trailer with nice ramp that is easy to get up.
A tying area outside with hard standing to groom horses wen its hit in the summer.
Very well lighted stables, preferably brick.

Haha not much :p
 
I can dream!! I think any sort of arena is out of the question. The rent would be up up up!

Good thought about turnout paddocks - if I made sure we had a small paddock or two accessible from the yard and gates in the right place then I could leave a stable open to the paddock

Thanks all, more ideas welcome!
 
tootsietoo said:
not silly at all, I wouldn't have thought of that. I have got a concreted area by the gate at the moment and I take it for granted, I wouldn't have thought to put one down by the new gate.
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Our field slopes down to the gate..you can imagine how deep it got;so,bought a load of ex council heavyweight paving slabs,cheap,very cheap..no more mud hereabouts.
 
Window at front and back of stable as horses like to be able to see the horizon, and not just be able to put head out of a small window.

I also have a little yard outside each stable which the horses can wander in and out of when in stable. Means they move around more.#

Easy acesss for large tractors and trailers and lorries delivering your hay, straw, supplies. more willing to deliver if no hassel.

Plus everything everyone else has said.
 
Thanks all. I'm a bit worried about the access for deliveries as our buildings will be a bit more hemmed in than before. I will have to measure turning circles.

Paving slabs a great idea. I think we will probably end up having to use hardcore as there is a lot of concrete to be broken up for the development so that will probably be reused everywhere possible.
 
miss_molly said:
Easy acesss for large tractors and trailers and lorries delivering your hay, straw, supplies. more willing to deliver if no hassel.
Click to expand...

Hell yes, I forgot to mention that!

I borrowed a tractor and moved our baler about from field to field to make sure everything fitted. Then we added a curve to the way in (to make it trickier for thieves to reverse out in a rush) and that has worked well.
The access was important when my pony died in the field suddenly. Imagine the heart break if his corpse had to be winched out by one leg for 100 yards. The fellmonger just drove in and collected him with no fuss or upset thanks to having the space.
 
oh yes, mine is the same! although he's fairly tolerant at the moment, I think he might become less so as time goes on and the children start needing bigger better faster horsepower!
 
I read in a magazine that a yard in germany has a convayer belt in the middle of the yard so in the morning when they are mucking out it just goes onto the convayer belt and it goes straight to the muck heap... im very jealous :)

Jon
 
A covered and well lit area with tie up space and plenty space for the van to be backed up outside and still get horses in and out. Your farrier will love you. :)
 
More additions to my dream spec, thank you!

Fire prevention and alarms is a good thought, thank you. And loo. Our only downstairs loo is outside which is a pain in the backside when potty training toddlers, but a godsend when we're all outside in muddy gear! However, we were thinking of blocking up the door and knocking through an internal wall so that it is an inside loo - may rethink.

And I LOVE the idea of a muck conveyer.
 
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