I use both pretty often. But I tend to say stable more often when referring to just any horse facility, and barn more often when I'm talking casually about going out to where my own horses are kept.

 

I use the word barn. Despite my barn having just horses and cats in it, (so I probably shouldn't be thinking this way) I think of a barn as a multi-farm animal species housing facility while a stable is a place for horses only. Also, if I was going to use the term 'stable', I would likely use 'stables' (eg. "That's the Smith stables over there - its a good place to board").

 

I use the word barn. I usually think of a stable as being a business establishment with lots of horses and stalls. My horse lives at a small barn with a few horses that live in pastures and the actual barn itself is mostly used for tack storage and has a few stalls that are rarely used.

 

In Australia most people say stables.

 

Barn! I don't have a boarding stables, I don't do so I don't see it would be correct to say 'stables'. I have a barn so I say barn.
"I'm going to the barn."
"On my way to the barn."
If i'm speaking like Benbrook stables or something like that, then I use it.

 

I say barn. If it's specifically for horses then I say "horse barn". I think the only time I've ever used the word stables was if it was included in the name of the farm.

 

This is a continent thing.

North Americans say barn,

European and Australian stables.

To the Brits a stall is a place where you can bring a horse inside and it is tied. A stable is a loose box where the horse is confined but loose.

A barn is a place to store hay, straw et al.

Now it is more common for stables to be put under one roof as in the US way, I had two of these and because things were also stored there I was more inclined to say barns when referring on the Internet.

 

This is a continent thing.

North Americans say barn,

European and Australian stables.

Not at all. At most, it's a subset of North Americans who call a horse-keeping place a barn. (Maybe the more prosperous, suburban East Coast?) To many of us - certainly anyone I've ever spoken with - a horse-keeping place is a stable. Whether it's a commercial establishment (boarding, teaching, racehorse training...) of which there are many hereabouts, or just the building you keep your own horse(s) in.

A barn is generally a building on a farm, and is much more likely to contain cows or farm machinery than horses. You might also keep horses there, but if was just horses, it'd be a stable.

 

I agree it is a continent thing.

Though my Mother who was born on an Indiana farm in 1927, and is eligible for DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution), says barn when referring to the building and stable when referring to the stall (the loose box where the horse is confined but loose). In people terms - his 'room'.

 

Neither. :P They live out in the pasture. Which in reality is a giant couple acre dry-ish lot as we use it as the sacrifice area to grow the other pastures to rotate to in the eating season.
We have a barn, which is really just a 30x30 pole building that the horses don't even go to.

Then we have the little barn, which we, funnily enough, call 'the little barn.' lol

They have a lean-to/run-in/open-air/3-sided-stall on one half of said little barn with 24-7 access from within their pasture/sacrifice space.

Stables- I envision rolling hills with white farm fence and horses running in bright green grass. I also associate stables with boarding or very large horse operations, not a small few horse home property situation.

 

I use stable always unless I'm on here.

A barn is somewhere you keep hay, tractors etc to me.

 

I use both, but mostly 'barn' around other horse people and 'stables' around non-horse people. When you say 'barn' to someone who has never been part of the equine industry, they sometimes give you strange looks...

For the record I also think 'stables' sounds classier.

 

mhh..this was interesting for me to think and read about. i guess in my case it would make sense to say stable. but i always say barn - along with everyone else that is at my "barn". i ride/work at a fancier, hunter show barn. we have 30 very nice horses with no other animals (of course there are always the occasional cats or birds that hang out for a little while). the horses live in there stalls, in a barn and they get turned out into there fields - on occasion we say pastures too.
also, when someone asks us where we work or ride we say at the horse farm.

i agree with the location thing, everyone in my area says barn too.

 

Around here we say barn, regardless of if it's a boarding facility or someone's backyard. If you say "stable," people think you're more than a little bit pretentious, or that you aren't from around here. :lol:

 

I always say barn no matter the fanciness.

 

This is OT, but when my young grand nephew was visiting, he referred to the horses' "cages" which made me step back a step. Mine only eat in their open air stalls since we live in Florida. The rest of the time, they are out. But, "cages"? Wow.

 

Where I live, I hear about stables. They are commercial. Privately, we all have corrals. I've never heard anyone mention a barn.

 

i say barn when talking of where i board my horse, although we don't actually have a barn there that gets used at all lol (little 2 stall barn from back when the place was a cow farm and the only time it's used is for horses that are very ill or injured and need to be inside).

i'll use stable or stables sometimes when i'm talking about an english barn i'm not familiar with that has the word stable in its name, but most barns around here folks just use the name or a shortened version of the name, or the name of the person that owns the place.

 

I have always tended to use "barn" unless "stable" was in the farm's name.

Now, at my set up at home, I have a paddock paradise, an open sided hay storage building, a run-in and a tack room. Still not sure what to call it, but I usually go with "shed" for the hay storage building, dry lot for the large area the run in is at, and overall it is "the facility" or the "track" lol.