Rubber Stable Floor

The most common type of stable floor is concrete. However, many stable owners are covering their concrete floors with rubber, which offers a number of advantages:

• Yielding. A concrete floor is very hard and can cause various types of injuries. For example, when getting up from a prone position, a horse can scrape skin off against the concrete. Also, if the bedding is thin, walking on the hard concrete can stress joints, potentially injure feed, or cause sore points where the horse lies down to rest or sleep. A rubber surface provides a softer and more yielding surface, which minimizes the rick of such injuries.
• Warmth. Rubber is naturally insulating, which is more comfortable and healthier for horses, especially in winter.
• Traction. Concrete and wooden floors can be slippery when wet; rubber provide better traction and thereby reduces the risk of injury to horses.
• Bedding. Rubber performs some of the functions of bedding (e.g. insulation, traction, shock absorption, softer surface), reducing the amount of bedding required. Stable owners, on average, report that they require only half as much bedding with a rubber stable floor as with concrete floors. This results in a considerable saving in bedding, labour and storage costs.

There are two solutions for providing a rubber stable floor. One is rubber stall mats which one lays on top of an existing floor (e.g. on top of a concrete floor) and join together to form a interlocking rubber floor mats. The other solution consists of liquid rubber which is poured onto the concrete floor and then allowed to harden (this takes one or two days) to form a single rubber surface which covers the entire floor. The term 'liquid rubber' refers to the fact that the rubber is in liquid form when it is initially put onto the stable floor, but it then forms a solid rubber floor. Both solutions have advantages and disadvantages.

By Doug M Stewart