Abstract
Equine farms are building both stables for the horses to live in and additional facilities to train and work horses (Kidd et al., 1997). For many of these farms, an outdoor arena that has an all-weather footing is the first working facility built. During inclement weather the ability to train in the outdoor arenas is inhibited, which in turn means the trainers, riders, and farms lose income as money is only made when horses are working, training, and competing. Indoor arenas allow for horses to continue to be worked no matter the weather conditions. The equine industry contributes a total of $122 billion dollars a year to the United States' economy. The expenditures to build and maintain these arenas the horses utilize for training and work are a portion of the equine economic contribution (American Horse Council Foundation, 2018). During the summer of 2018, an anonymous online survey was conducted to begin to characterize indoor arenas. Owners, managers, and riders were questioned on a variety of topics including arena construction and design, arena usage, footing type, maintenance practices, environmental concerns, and potential health issues experienced within the facilities. Respondents in the study defined indoor arenas differently depending on geographic region, however most definitions included a roof, some enclosure, and footing in order to work the horses. In addition, of the 335 respondents of the survey, 71% or 239 respondents reported having concerns about the environment within the indoor arena. The three main concerns are dust, moisture, and lack of air movement. Overall, the survey begins to build our understanding regarding these facilities and provides the framework to continue research in the future.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-9-2021
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1093/tas/txab198
Repository Citation
McGill, Staci; Hayes, Morgan D.; Tumlin, Kimberly I.; and Coleman, Robert, "Characterization of Indoor Arenas through an Anonymous Survey" (2021). Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Faculty Publications. 248.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/bae_facpub/248
Supplementary data
Included in
Animal Sciences Commons, Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering Commons, Epidemiology Commons
Notes/Citation Information
Published in Translational Animal Science, v. 5, issue 4, txab198.
© The Author(s) 2021
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.