Stall Mats

[RMeadows]

I've built my stalls, but am in the need of stall mats (I have a concrete floor in my barn).

I work at a plant and have been offered 150' of conveyor belt material from our mine. It's rubber, almost 2" thick. Is there a downside to using this material as stall matts?
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How wide is it? The downside is that it doesn't fit together very well at the seams. The sawdust gets under it and you constantly fighting them. My first barn I did with these. Didnt' have much choice as I didn't have much money then. I cursed those stalls every day. Also with that old worn out belting it's lost most of it's cushioning for the horses.

If you can afford it get a good grid interlocking mat system. You will never have a problem with it. If that's too expensive I would at least get the 4x6 stall mats and for a little extra you can get the interlocking sides to it as well. That's the best and most trouble free.

The second choice would be the regular stall mats. On concrete it shouldn't be too bad. But again you run the problem of having to pick the mats up and get the bedding out from under it just not near as bad as the belting material.

I guess it just depends on your pocketbook and how much hassle you want to put up with.

[MikePA]

How wide is the material? What size are your stalls? How are you going to cut it? How are you going to get it into your stalls? Do you have floor drains in your stalls?

Depending upon their size, they might be extremely heavy and hard to move. 150 feet will be very heavy as well, just to move it so you can cut it.

We've had non-interlocking mats as well as interlocking mats. The non-interlocking will allow bedding to get underneath them. Either kind will allow urine to get underneath if you do not use enough bedding. With either kind, I imagine you're going to eventually have to remove them to clean under them. How hard will they be to remove from the stalls? When they're wet and moldy on the bottom.

FWIW, our non-interlocking mats are just outside our barn at the end of the aisle to keep the horses from dragging mud into the barn. The interlocking kind are serving a similar purpose in our outside wash area.

[RMeadows]

Basically, they are free and I need mats. As long as they are safe I'll do with the pain of cleaning until I can afford real ones!

They are 48" wide and I'll cut them at work. I'm going to use the remainder to line the perimeter of my dog kennel to keep em from diggin. [img]/forums/images/icons/smirk.gif[/img]