Barn Reflooring

I haven't been blogging much, as my time has been filled with re-flooring the barn stalls. It is a time-consuming project, since you have to work around the poles and partitions that are already in place.

I never thought I would have to replace the barn floor, since it is on a rather thick base of blue clay......but this is the second time in ten years that it has become necessary. The first time we filled and tamped and it worked.......for awhile. But I have come to the conclusion that drafties are far harder on the ground than I thought. This time some of the holes have actually gone deeper than the clay, allowing ground water to seep up into the stalls. And, of course, the ever-present rodents keep creating holes under the walls which also allows water to sneak in.

I've had light horses for a long time.....and never had as much of a problem with them tearing up the stall floors. Even though many of them were paw-ers, they just didn't do as much damage. Oh, sure, they were able to make lumpies and holes in their stalls, but not like my big ones do.

I guess it has more to do with their weight. 2000-pounders manage to push and shove material around creating higher lumpies, even hills, and bigger holes. Some of the holes actually look like wildebeest wallows...convenient and comfy for them while laying down.....but massive problems when trying to get back up out of them.....kinda like a bean-bag chair. Once they get their "big shoes" on (scotch bottoms/show shoes) the poor dirt floors don't stand a chance; they get chewed up and re-distributed in ways they shouldn't be.

So, after 12 years and several $1000's of dollars last time, we are trying something new.....well, new for us. This time we are covering the gravel/fill with rubber mats. I've used mats before....in my trailers, under the horses at fair time so they don't start digging to China while bored. When my girlfriend boarded her horses with us, one of them was on mats because the stall floor was in sch bad shape. My girlfriend used mats in her barn at home, and loved them. I'm not so sure, myself, if they are the best choice. I seem to lean more toward the natural end of things, and am not really thrilled with horses lying on cold mats in the winter.

But.....something needed to be done. We are still in the process of fixing the floors, but we have more than half of them done.....and we're running out of mats and fill. The fill is a whole 'nother issue......since the partitions have been in place for some time...it is a one-wheelbarrow-at-a-time and then dump the stuff, rake it out and try to level it as much as possible. That's where the REAL labor is. A skid-steer would be wonderful.....but it would have to be small; like 3' wide. We don't have one, and renting one every week is not a good option. Which is another reason why this project is so labor intensive......between us working our "normal" jobs and keeping up with barn chores there just is not the ability to just "get-r-done" in one fell swoop (although that would be wonderful!!!!) Between working with the feed store to get the mats ordered and in, and dealing with the gravel haulers (who have bigger jobs to do) we are somewhat at the mercy of other interests. However, they have ALL been trying to help as much as possible.

The horses who are now on mats are handling it quite well, thank you. Except for Missy, who thought that the black floor was nothing more than a big hole waiting to swallow her....and nearly killed me the first time she even SAW a matted stall (which wasn't hers, by the way) let alone go into hers once it WAS matted. Fire definitely does NOT like the mats.....she likes pawing the ground and sniffing whatever odors manage to waft out of it.....not something she can do on the mats. She's not much of a paw-er, and being a baby, doesn't do much damage, if any. The others are like.....whatever. Some of them secretly like the noise the mats make when they walk on them, I think. However, we have discovered that it is harder to un-cast a cast horse, as they cannot get a grip with their feet on the rubber like they can with the dirt.

But some good has come out of it on our side, too. It IS easier to clean the stalls. Oh, you still take out as much stuff as before, but it's easier to get to and under....plus you're not taking out even more materials from the holes. And, surprisingly, there is more "clean" stuff left. Because the mats are a bit slick, the sawdust moves from the middle to the sides, so raking what's up against the sides back to the middle has given us much more "decent" sawdust left over!! Plus, the mats keep the decent sawdust from picking up moisture from the ground.

We still have several more horses to do.....some may not get theirs done til Spring, depending on weather around here (getting more fill is tough right now since things are so wet that large dump trucks have a habit of sinking in)....but we've got most of them done....so that only one should go through the winter with a lumpy stall.

I will be so glad when it's all done!!!!