The Ideal Working Draft Horse facility

[Ron]

Hi All
I have seen a lot of good barns and corral systems over the years but most people I know always wished they had done something different in order to have the perfect system for handling their drafts. Some like the conventional barn with the stalls on the side of a long alley way and harness in a harness room, others like the three corner shed with open corrals into the sun.
Some of the nicest I have seen are the Mennonite with multiple gates and feeders around the walls allowing them to separate colts from mares as the mares go to work and come back for feed. These seem to work well but to me they make harnessing a chore carrying harness. I saw a really nice system in NZ with a “C” shaped shed facing to the morning sun but cutting off the wind and late day summer sun. A series of corrals to sort horses leading to the central corral and stalls in the barn itself. The harness was just off center in a separate room for easy access.
Just wondered if you were building again how would you build your Ideal operation for easy feeding, harnessing, hitching and working drafts?
Cheers
Ron

[JaredWoodcock]

I have been wondering the same thing. I would like to build a loafing shed off of my chicken coop so that I can toss the manure in for chicken bedding, then have a concrete shelf that I could push the manure mix off into the spreader.

I would like to hear other ideas and see some pictures or drawings.

[sdesocio]

Gene Logsdon has a discussion fo good multi function barns, and Lynn Miller talks about certain requirements but it would be great to hear or see rough drawings of how people layout their barn/yards

[dominiquer60]

So much depends on your topography, herd size, breeding or not, goals. We have the barn that we have until someone decides he really wants to change it. 4 box stalls, 2 connect together and lead out to a small paddock. It is nice to let them run in and out as they want to. However we can open the big gate to let then out to a large pasture or close them into the stall. On the west side of the barn is a small attached shed that is great in the summer for the breeze, but not so nice during harsh weather. Currently our harness is in a separate shed, we have to pull a wagon out to access the harness and horses are outside on a hitching rail. It is not too bad unless you get caught in bad weather and everyone gets soaked including the supplies stored on the wagon.

Ideally with more foals in the future it would be nice to double the size of our barn with 4 straight, 4 box stalls (2 with removable divider for foaling, we use the isle for that now), with a feed and harness room, and a larger attached shed with less chance of horses bottlenecking, more hay storage would be possible above if we did this.

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