Yes, I mean "HORSE KEEPING" not "HOUSE Keeping". I should know all about Horse Keeping because I had nine horses at one time all to myself. If you have horses and love your barn and stay around your barn for long, especially with young children or teenagers, something is going to get out of place. To be a good horse keeper, one must always think ahead. Poor thinking ahead means lots of trouble.
Before bringing in the horses from their paddocks, a good check of everything should be done to avoid having objects in their way. An ordinary hosepipe can create big confusion if it is turned on, and the horse steps on it, cuts it, and the horse gets excited. Everybody does things different, but wash racks should be off to the side and away from the incoming traffic. Let face it, when you have horses, you also have a lot of stuff. Brooms and muck forks, tack, feed bins, grooming equipment and wheelbarrows stuck somewhere because it is used often. This stuff all accumulates, and while you want it to be accessible, you don't want it to be overflowing into the areas of your barn where your'll be leading and housing your equine pals.
Here are a couple of tips for creating effective, convenient and safe work areas in you barn. Rather than using the central barn aisle for cross-tying horses to groom and tack up=thus it blocks acess to other stalls, think about a 12 x 24 foot grooming bay/washrack, divided into three stations, directly across the aisle from a tack room of about the same size. That way you step across the aisle to retrieve or put away saddles and bridles.
Even if you do not plan on a washrack in your barn, you can design a grooming bay with access to water and a drain in the floor to facilitate clean-up. Most people find it very useful to have an area where they can tie horses up securely for bathing. A concrete floor with rubber mats is the budget choice, but rubber paving bricks are the ultimate waterproof flooring, if it is affordible. REMEMBER! HEADS UP WHEN BRING IN THE HORSES!!
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