HOW TO BUILD A SHADE SHELTER

Unfortunately, we see heaps of horses (and other animals) all summer long stuck in hot paddocks without any shelter and this really worries me, as the risk of melanoma for our equines is equally as big an issue as it is for us humans...and there are no UV resistant rugs available as yet!

So, in order to protect our horses from dangerous sun damage, including skin cancers, we do really need to be providing them with some UV resistant shelter, so if any of you want to know how to make a very cheap but effective shade shelter like our one shown here-this is how to do it......and it's even workable for any of you that are grazing your horses too as it's a totally removable structure, so your landlord shouldn't mind either and I bet it will be less money than the cost of a new rug.......and it will last for many years to come, and then you can ditch those awful summer rugs........and offer your horses real quantifiable UV protection from the sun...without making the poor boy or girl swelter as with a rug.

So you will need:

4 x 100mm x 100mm thick square shaped H4 treated posts. These are the most affordable and are available from any good timber merchant who will also often deliver them.............Buy these at a height to suit your horses needs-we have big horses here so ours are 3.6m high....plus another option you can consider in order to make your shelter even cheaper is you can use just 2 posts as a lean too against an existing structure like a shed, garage, barn etc.....as shown here with our sleepout....

1 x square or rectangular shade sail with D rings on each corner -a minimum recommended size would be 3m x 3.6m but bigger is better-trademe do some great prices for these at around $70

A bag of Postcrete for each post hole-about $15 per bag

We advise you to place the whole structure facing towards the mid day sun, with the front of the shade being slightly lower than the back in order to maximise sun protection......

Dig your holes so your posts go into the ground at about 400mm deep-place them squarely in the holes and add postcrete mix all around them, which is a dry powder form of cement that sets as solid concrete once water is poured onto it so there is no mixing or mess-Make sure though that you do not move the posts until totally dry-or they will be baggy in the holes-24 hours normally does the trick.....

Then fix on your shade sail and there you go for a very effective yet affordable easy shelter.....and say goodbye to all that messing about of summer rugging-feed your horses hay at the shelter in order to encourage them into it so they can get used to it and my guys hide under ours a lot so it's well worth it......