group housing

[minister man]

Does anyone keep their minis in group pens or stalls? I know that cattle can be kept in loose housing of in a freestall, where they have stalls for sleeping and an area for standing and then a feed rack..... does anyone have a set up like that for their horses? I have seen some housing pictures on line with group housing, just wondering if anyone has any experience keeping their mini's that way?

 

[chandab]

Mine mostly live on drylot with shelter, 6 mares in one group, 3 gelding and a colt in another. The mares do have stalls for their one hard feed a day, otherwise they share space and hay. In the summer they get some time on pasture.

 

[paintponylvr]

Mostly our ponies are in groups in paddocks, pastures and some in pens. The current "shelters" are large round bales of hay and trees (pines and some others).

Here are a few pics...







Here is a mixed group of boys. The bay/white above the "2015" and the black/white to his right are both Jr stallions. The rest in this group are geldings with 1 Arab mare sometimes out there as well... When you do groups, they have to have enough room to be able to get away - even when playing. Sometimes the play can turn rough and/or down right nasty.



These two are same year "mates" and the sire of the blk/white colt is the grandsire of the silver/wh gelding.



This just plain got UGLY. We had to separate them for more than a couple of months - they even fought over the fencing. The bay/wh on the left w/ front leg raised is a 39" shetland stalion (3yrs) and the bay/wh w/ head thrown back on the right is a 12.3 (51") 1/2 shetland/1/2 arab gelding (6y).



If you put "feed bunks" or hay feeders in a barn, make sure there is enough room for the "low man" on the totem pole, to get out of the way and hopefully never be trapped. If the barn is steel or tin, wood interior walls are a good idea.

I know of other breeders who have lost horses when they got to playing too rough and ran into the steel hay bunks they had in the pasture. This has happened with both full size and mini sized horses.

I lost an older mare in December - when a younger mare attacked her and broke her hip. They were in the open - the older mare was not cornered or pinned against a tree, but she couldn't get away because the younger mare would just suddenly be "all over her". There was no fixing it - our oldest pony had to be euthanized. They had been fine turned out together for several years - but there had been changes in the herd dynamics... I had made a note to myself on Tuesday that we'd separate them over the next weekend - we euthanized her on Friday morning.

 

[paintponylvr]

Here are some pics of NC shade spots!!





At our previous farmette, we did have a barn. At various times, it was opened to groups of ponies. We didn't put hay in the barn though - the girls would just fight too much and hurt each other or the barn itself.



Here is a roof with a round bale on the other side of the fence panel. This worked well enough... This particular paddock is long and narrow - there is another round bale near the end of the paddock (you can see it in the photo above).



While most of our ponies are out on pasture 24/7, we do have two horse trailers and 1 stall that could be used as proper stalls if needed for shelter or injuries. We could also do a temporary shelter like this - I try to always keep a couple of panels that aren't used for other projects so that IF I need them in a pinch, I've got them...

 

[candycar]

My 4 all live in a group barn and large dry lot. The barn is approx 16 X 24, there is plenty of room for everyone. When I feed hay, I spread it out along the outside edges and make sure there is at least 5 piles, or use hay nets in each corner. To feed pellets, everyone gets their own pan in a corner and I watch untill they are done.

We are in the process of extending the barn and building a seperate stall. I have found out the hard way that this is necessary for when one has to be seperated from the group due to illness or other things.

 

[Miniv]

We have a 6 stall barn and over 20 minis/ponies, plus 6 riding horses.....so the barn is only used for foaling, any who are sick or our two older ones. What's nice is the barn has a big center area where we can pull the young ones into at night or if the weather is lousy.

We have 6 large paddocks and two pastures with shelters scattered about.......and half the time they don't use the shelters!