This new weekly series talks about the details that matter when building or renovating a barn or equestrian facility. It’s a known fact that horses know a million ways to hurt themselves, and our best defense is to share our knowledge on how to keep our friends safe. Our colleague, noted equine facilities designer Holly Matt of Pegasus Design Group, has generously agreed to write this weekly column. Have tips you’d like to share? Send them to [email protected].
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Let’s talk about how important barn environment is on your horse’s health, specifically fresh air and natural light.
Horses kept in stalls are exposed to large amounts of irritant particles, mold spores, and ammonia gas from dust, hay, and bedding. Steaming hay doesn’t help your horse if the rest of his environment is dusty and not well ventilated. Keeping them outside is the best remedy, but that is not always the best management practice for performance horses or during severe weather.
The difference means the health of your horse on a daily basis, and it is the most important part of your barn function next to safety. Especially with colder weather, closing doors and windows means no fresh air, because most barns are not ventilated well enough. You can easily add eave, ridge, and louver venting to help stale, dusty and ammonia-filled air escape and bring in fresh air. Horses need 8-10 complete air changes an hour in the barn. For perspective, humans only need 2-5 per hour. If you don’t have adequate ventilation, keep the windows open, and blanket more.
In initial design, monitor roofs with louvers and glass, and raised center aisle (RCA) ventilation offer the best ventilation performance as well as offering natural light into the barn. Updating ventilation in your existing barn with cupolas, opening eaves and adding ridge vents will improve your clean air flow and lower your vet bills.
Inflammatory airway disease (IAD) is a huge problem for performance horses, yet only racing people pay much attention to it, thus their well-ventilated barns. People need to be more aware of what they can and should do, even if their horse doesn’t have heaves (yet), or show signs of IAD.
For more information on IAD, here’s a good article to read: http://ker.equinews.com/article/heaves-and-inflammatory-airway-disease-in-horses
This veterinarian’s equine clinic has tons of natural light and airflow. Raised Center Aisle (RCA) window openings, eave gaps (best seen to left of tree) and exterior shuttered windows.
Here you can see from the interior the eave gaps, and how clinically healthy a metal-rafter metal-wall environment is for horses. Easy to sanitize, and significantly reduces particulates in the air.
End wall lower to vent ridge line heat
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