Tips to Balance Social Distancing & Equestrian Business Operations

Five Areas Around Your Facility Where You Can Respond to COVID-19 Concerns

We understand that uncertain times with the global health crisis can make it difficult to run an equestrian business. It can be challenging to reconcile social distancing demands while also keeping your barn operating, horses healthy, and clients happy.

If your business has clients that show up daily, you’ll need to implement some protocols fast to ensure responsible community health.  

Here are five areas where you can take action to limit staff and visitors’ ability to cough/sneeze near others, and/or touch anything unnecessary.

  1. Establish and Enforce General Guidelines

Barns are inherently dusty places that cause people to sneeze and cough. Insist staff and clients implement 6’ minimum separation even if they are 100% convinced the other person is healthy. That is the only way to train yourself to do naturally.  Social separation is a learned behavior that must be practiced, like safe distancing between horses while sharing an arena.

  • Email your clients what your facility’s COVID-19 containment efforts are and insist all follow your protocols.

2. Team Care 
Your team is stressed and worried. Talk to them! For many, this is the first time they’ve been through something like this. See if they need help coordinating online grocery purchases, or refilling time on their cell phones.

  • Place soap, hand sanitizer, disinfectant spray, and other cleaning materials in the tack room, bathroom, and any common areas. Train staff in how to sanitize their hands and items throughout the day. Make sure they sanitize their cell phones constantly.
  • Consider investing in a No-Touch Digital Thermometer for your team and boarders. That will give you an objective read on a person’s health. Horse people tend to be quite stoic and often don’t want to report when they are feeling under the weather.
  • Send home ANYONE with a fever or unusual symptoms. The CDC believes people with COVID-19 are most contagious when showing symptoms. Symptoms will appear 2-14 days after exposure, with nearly half of the people with the virus showing symptoms after the first five days. 

3. Managing Lessons/Clinics/Schoolings
Postpone or cancel all large gatherings of 10 or more people, per CDC guidance.  Large gatherings where you have people crowded together are called super-spreading events. That means no barn parties, no horse shows, no happy hours. (Sorry!)

  • Move activities outside as much as possible.  It’s easier to keep rider separation in a wide open field. Bonus: The virus does not like sunlight.
  • If you decide to host clinics or similar equestrian activities, limit groups to 4 or fewer. Insist riders stay in separate areas of the ring
  • Do not allow auditors, or only permit them outside with appropriate social distancing. 
  • Schedule 15 minute blocks between lessons/ groups to help limit how many people are present at the same time.

 

  1. Managing Movement
  • Quarantine your facility’s common areas off from visitors as much as possible. For example, you might make certain barns or areas off-limits to limit cross-contamination. Common area lounges and viewing rooms should be utilized as little as possible.
  • Close your indoor and/or limit the number of simultaneous riders in a ring. It’s tough to keep people in separate areas once you get over three people in any ring, regardless of the size.
  • If you have a large facility, consider scheduling access  so boarders don’t all show up at the same time to ride. Between vets, farriers, boarders, and normal staff you can quickly get 15+ people present in a closed area at larger barns.
  1. Sanitize Communal Surfaces.
    Take preventive action to minimize the number of people touching common surfaces as much as possible. For example:
  • Limit what visitors can touch- no common writing tools, markers, office phones, pitchforks, etc.
  • Keep tack room doors open to limit doorknob interactions. Have doors/ gates handled by a designated person to minimize the number of hands that touch it.
  • Have clients tack up their horses in their stalls rather than use a common grooming/ crosstie area
  • Make a list of what items are handled by multiple people at various points throughout the day and set a schedule for disinfecting. Include items such as Stall Doors/Gates/Crossties, Microwaves/Refrigerators/Sinks, Doorknobs/Bathrooms, etc

We’ll continue to post updates as they become available for the equestrian community.  If our team can answer any questions, feel free to contact us.

Stay Safe,

Team STRIDER™