What facilities would you put into your perfect yard?

Somewhere to soak hay, assuming you soak yours? And some grids to put the haynets on to drain, at my last yard there was also a concrete trot up area that was useful just a straight piece of concrete that was nice and flat with a circle at one end that was away from all the goings on
 
At LAST there are builders on site! I am writing my specification now and I've included lots of these ideas. Of course, the stable spec is much longer than the house/garden spec!

So I thought I'd resurrect this thread to see if anyone else wants to play Fantasy Yards. Let me know if there's anything we've missed!
 
Boring serious bit first - if you are planning on soaking hay and letting the water go into the usual grainage system, don't tell anyone in case it gets back to the planning officers at the council - apparently it is illegal to release this type of waste water into the normal "domestic" water drainage system - I'm sure someone on here will know the correct rules and terminology.

A washroom/dry room with heated water for the horses is my absolute dream, I'd literally kill for one of those!

How about timed feeders in every stable, so you can make up breakfasts the night before, and at a certain time in the morning the feedbowls will "emerge" for each horse, freshly dampened and mixed, and you can have a lie in?

Position your stables at a certain angle to the prevailing wind, then on windy days the yard will be "self-sweeping".

Make sure your hay/bedding store is attached to your stables so that deliveries can be made by truck to an opening on one side of the store, and you take it from the other side, through a doorway straight into your stable barn so eliminating stuff blowing out of your wheelbarrow as you cross the yard.

Wi-fi and a laptop kept in the tackroom so you can access HHO on the yard inbetween tending to the horses is a must.

Oh and you don't need expensive conveyor belts for mucking out onto, just train your horses to poo and wee into a big bucket, then chuck that in your wheelbarrow - each horse mucked out in about one minute - result!!!
 
I worked on a yard in Italy once, where the stables were ont he edge of a hill. The boxes had a flap in the back wall, which we threw the muck through - it went straight onto the muckheap, and saved all the barrowing...

On our yard, important things were - drainage - one stable didn't drain properly, and has been a nightmare - we had to knock a brick out of the back wall to let the pee out! Lots of tie rings - inside and outside stables. We also have a hook inside and outside each stable. We have a locker for each stable for tack/grooming kits. We have storage for rugs in the overhang of the roof. Each stable has a foldable rug rail high up too, then the tackroom area has a 5 arm one. Lighting - especially for dark nights more are better than less! Make the concrete/hardcore area as big as poss for delivery lorries/trailers to turn round/park. Make the access to the muckheap huge - the farmers that take ours away have huge tractors! Skylights in the roof - I love them in winter, but in hot weather I often wish that I could keep the sun and heat out, so a flap to close on those would be a luxury. Agree with the hardcore/concrete in the gateways - and make it bigger than you think if your land gets at all wet. Don't position tackrooms near to gateways or fences - even with locked gates we had everything stolen one lunchtime - they just threw it over the fence into a van. Now the tack is 100yds from the lane, so they would have to run up and down the yard's drive, which makes them much more visible and obvious to neighbours etc! Personally I detest automatic drinkers - awful to keep clean properly and you can't tell when a horse isn't drinking.

Good luck. At the end of the day, your own yard is fab whatever it has!
 
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