Main Building and Indoor Arena
Welcome to the MSU Horse Teaching and Research Center walking tour. Our first stop is our main building and indoor riding arena.This building includes our managers office, the restrooms, and a classroom area. When you look inside our classroom, you can see a variety of awards in the trophy case that was donated by the family of a former student, Amanda Awalt, in her memory. Most of the horses on this farm are purebred Arabians that were bred here, foaled, and raised, and trained by our MSU students. One of the most distinguishing features of our MSU Horse programs is that our animals are used primarily for teaching. Our students are exposed to working with a variety of age groups of horses and each Spring they are responsible for preparing on average twenty horses for our annual sale. As we move past the classroom and through the inner doors, we will enter the indoor riding arena’s observation area. Our arena is 80 x 180 feet and is where our horsemanship and training classes are held. If you come into our arena during a school day you may observe our students working with the young horses or in horsemanship classes. We may also have a round pen set up in the far end of the arena where our young horses experience their first rides. It's always safer to get on a horse for the first time in a smaller confined space as opposed to an entire arena. We also are fortunate enough to have a heating system in our arena. If you look at the ceiling, we have some boxes that are actually furnaces connected to long tubes that blow the warmer air throughout the arena. This makes the arena more comfortable during the winter teaching sessions for both the students and the instructors! The arena is only heated to about 40 degrees to decrease costs and make sure the horses don’t getting too warm while exercising.
South Pastures/Small Paddocks/Outdoor Riding Arena
Now, we're going to move to the next tour stop, which is our exercise areas that are just to the north of the main barn. You will observe two large turn out areas for our stallions. The outdoor riding arena is enclosed with white vinyl fencing and provides an opportunity to work the horses outside when the weather allows. Horses are very athletic animals so it’s very important that they get outside and exercise every day.
Upper Barn
Stalls Another stop is the upper barn, also called the main barn. This barn has twenty four stalls to house our show horses, breeding stallions, horses in training, or injured horses that might require special care. The stalls are 10x12 with the exception of a couple of larger stalls that house our stallions. If you look above the stalls you won't see any ceiling and that design is intentional to optimize ventilation. We typically bed on wood shavings that are over rubber mats with a concrete base. We also have a heated tack room and a grooming area. Tack Room The tack room provides storage for our saddles, bridles, and halters. You may observe our MSU students working with horses so please use caution as you move through the barn. Our young horses may spook or get frighted if people are running or yelling through the barn! Horses are prey animals and will react to quick movements or loud noises by trying to run away from the source.
Stallion Paddock
The stallion paddock provides a turn-out space for the farm's many stallions. Only one stallion is allowed in a paddock at a time. The paddock includes special fencing built specifically for stallions.
Draft Horse Barn
The next stop is the draft horse barn which is the low, smaller shed with the hitching rails in between our older barn and the main barn. Some days you may observe students grooming large draft horses tied to the hitching rail. These MSU students learn to harness and drive our draft horses in our popular Draft Horse Basics Class. You may see them drive our MSU Show Wagon in special events, as well as the Michigan Great Lakes International Draft Horse Show held at the MSU Pavilion in mid-October. We use two Clydesdales for class and you may recognize them as the same breed of horse that pull the Budweiser hitch! Our draft horses are much much larger than our Arabians, and have feathering or long hair on their legs which is distinctive for their breed. MSU has a long history with draft horses, and early in the century we were one of the primary breeders of both Belgians and Percheron horses before focusing primarily on breeding the Arabian horse.
Main Barn
This gambrel-roofed barn was originally located on the main MSU campus and was moved to this location in sections. This barn contains 24 stalls. In the spring, this barn becomes almost completely full with mares close to foaling or who have recently foaled.
Reproductive Barn
This building hosts the farm’s breeding facilities. There are breeding stocks where mares are brought for pregnancy checks, biopsies, cultures, or artificial insemination. There is a laboratory to check semen quality and prepare semen for artificial insemination. There is a large breeding area where natural covers are conducted.
Mare/Foal Pastures
One thing to know is that most of the horses at this farm are purebred Arabians and they were bred here, foaled here, raised here, and trained by students. We have roughly fifteen to seventeen foals born on the farm every year. So you can come between 8 and 4 o'clock every day of the week and see those new Spartans after they have been born.
