This gallery is to help you with ideas for your architect.  Bits and pieces from all of these can be applied to the development of your barn structure.  You will see the details in some of the other topics in this chapter.

Extreme trail riding has become popular, though there have been plenty of old cowboy books written where the good guy had to do some extreme riding to get to where he wanted to go. This one is located in…

Feed rooms are specialized areas within the barn used for preparing the food delivered to the horses.  It often doubles as storage for food but here, the article and images are about organization and preparation.

Systems to feed horses are developed to make life easier on the caretakers, keep the food in one place (efficiency), slow the consumption rate (slow feeders), keep the food from spoiling (weather) or automate…

The gates used in a fence line on horse farms range from elegant to unsafe, hand made to mass produced and maintained to barely keeping together.

Safety is the key here and is a recurring theme in this…

From simple to complicated, I have seen a wide variety of fence gate latches.  I boil them down to only two types.  You either operate them with one hand or with two hands.  I prefer the one handed gate…

Horses don’t normally live behind fences.  They are inherently dangerous for the horse although being born and raised behind one, the young horse learns quickly to respect them.  Yet injury from fencing occurs…

For me, there are only two styles of fences: safe and unsafe. Most fences fall into the unsafe category and over time, a lot of the safe fences become unsafe due to poor maintenance. I will discuss here all…

Fire in a barn is unimaginable yet I have seen a few and the results afterwards.  Fire scares me.  The best thing is to prevent it from happening.  The next best is to have a suppressant system in place.

This is a testimony from a horse owner who took the 2 week no-grain challenge. “She is so calm now even a novice rider can sit on her. We’ve even been able for the first time since she was 6 months old take the…

Most floors of barns are either dirt or a simple concrete slab.  Some barns have more elegant floors or built in features to help you and your horse.  This gallery has them all.

I am not an engineer or architect but I do know that if the barn is not a pole barn (structure is attached to poles set in the ground) then it is sitting on top of a footing or foundation.  This adds…

The variety of these structures on horse farms is large.  Here are some images from simple to hand made to ornate.  All do the job.  Whatever you choose to use remember to keep safety a priority followed by…

One of the fun things to do with horses is bathing and grooming the horse.  Even the hard edged rancher appreciates a clean horse.  Having a specialized area to do these things is common on almost every farm I visit.

Believe it or not, I have seen and have worked in some barns that are heated.  Some heat with overhead force hot air systems and others with radiant heat conducted through the concrete floor.  Fans and water…