Turnout
Facilities differ greatly in what they offer for turnout for each horse. You should know whether daily turnout is offered, and how many hours a day each horse gets out. In ads for boarding stables, you might read “half-day turnout,” which generally means each boarder's horse gets approximately four hours of the day out of its stall — which is perhaps okay if you ride every day, but not nearly enough if you don't. Other questions you need to ask include:
Will your horse be turned out with other horses? Being herd animals, horses are happier when turned out with companions, if everyone gets along well together without a lot of kicking and fussing. If your horse doesn't socialize well with other horses, you will need to make this clear to the facility manager.
Are the horses all turned out in a big pasture (“pasture turnout”) after feeding in the morning and spend the day out until they are brought in for evening feeding and for the night?
The more time your horse is out of its stall, the better. Being penned up in a stall twenty-four hours a day is an unnatural condition for an animal that has evolved over centuries to be out grazing all day. Unfortunately, many show horses are kept this way solely as a convenience, for fear they'll get injured, throw a shoe, or mess up a tail set. If you own a horse like this, you have an obligation to see to it that the horse receives ample exercise everyday, whether you ride, lunge, hand-walk the horse, or pay someone else to do it for you.
