Rethinking The Box Stall

Small but significant changes can make confinement healthier and more comfortable for horses.

- Nancy Moffitt

I wish I could say my experiment with group housing for our two ponies came from a virtuous desire to do what was best for their health based on the latest equine research. In truth, putting the ponies together in one large stall was about necessity, about working with what we had. And what we had in 2010 was one large, wide-open space in a long-neglected pre-Civil War stone bank barn.

We had just moved to our small farm in southeastern Pennsylvania and we reeager to bring Cupcake and Falcon home.

But our barn was little more than walls, windows without glass, and a roof---and a barely functioning roof at that. “They are ponies---they are tough,” I told my family. We threw up nylon stall guards in the doorways of a huge stone room that had probably housed cows or pigs back in the day. We put down bedding, brought in hay and water, and led the ponies in as a cold rain fell in sheets outside.Cupcake and Falcon looked at one another, walked around and started eating.

“It’s just like a big run-in,” I told my husband confidently. My daughter the hunter/jumper rider was less optimistic. “This is weird,” she said. “When can we put in stalls?”

But we never did put in those stalls. What started as a temporary arrangement became permanent because it worked so well. Our ponies were calm and better behaved, on the ground and in the ring. Today, a growing body of research helps to explain why.