Horse Trailer Design

Horse trailers come in all kinds of different varieties. Most cavalry units have the fancy gooseneck, slant load trailers with windows, individual dividers, tack racks, wrap around logos, sleeping quarters, hay racks, etc. Our little unit has always used regular, no frills, slant load stock trailers. I recently acquired a Calico 4-horse stock trailer with a single divider in it for the unit. I use the same for my personal horses. The divider is set up so you can put two forward and two in the rear but some of our horses are pretty big so it works out better to just put two in it with one in each compartment. I squeezed three into it today but it looked a little cramped in there. Probably not a good idea for a long trip. Plus, while it was tying in the last horse I found myself squished against the side of the trailer as the horses shifted around to get comfortable. One feature I do like is the escape door. It makes cleaning the trailer easy and allows you to get into the front of the trailer without having to approach the horse from the rear. You just have to remember to duck your head if you leave by the escape door. I have rattled my teeth more than once when I forgot to duck. All of our trailers have rubber mats in them to give the horse some traction while we're moving. I coat the wood floors with deck sealer once in a while to keep the urine and other nasty stuff from rotting the boards. The sealer unfortunately makes the boards very slippery so you have to have rubber mats to keep the horses from skating in your trailer. The only problem I have with the mats is that they have a tendancy to slide out the back if you don't have something to hold them in place. The trailer manufacturer put a brace on one side of the trailer that corresponds to a slot in the mat and is supposed to hold the mat in place but unfortunately, the mat just starts sliding out from the other side. In our older trailer I just screwed the last mat in so it doesn't move and holds the other mats in place. It makes cleaning the floor boards a little bit tougher but solves the problem of sliding mats. Another good feature in the new trailer is that the lip on the entrance to the trailer is rounded so the horse can't scrape his leg on it if he slips getting in or out. This feature saves a lot of coronet band injures--one of my least favorite.