Rehabilitation facilities around the world choose ComfortStall Flooring System for its unique ability to provide therapeutic comfort underfoot for horses recovering from surgery and serious medical conditions.
In the heart of California’s Santa Ynez Valley, Katie Fisher operates Kingfisher Farms, where she cares mostly for racing Thoroughbreds. Cases range from horses recovering from severe injuries to those vacationing briefly from the track. “I’ve always been blown away by how soft ComfortStall flooring is,” she marvels. Katie has seen how well ComfortStall holds up over time: the original ComfortStall flooring was installed a decade ago in some stalls, where it is still performing like new, while the current ComfortStall flooring was recently installed in other stalls.
ComfortStall’s padded flooring offers relief to horses suffering from sore feet and symptoms of laminitis by providing a comfortable and supportive cushion to stand on which encourages them to lie down more and take the weight off their feet.
At her Aspen Equine Clinic in Northern California’s Windsor, Chari Perce finds ComfortStall a practical timesaver. "To sterilize a stall with rubber mats, I used to haul the mats out, hose them down, and leave them out to dry – a half-day job! The ComfortStall system is seamless and only takes half an hour to sterilize, and I don’t have the dried urine and manure buildup that occurs under mats."
ComfortStall provides thermal insulation so that neither extreme heat nor the cold and damp of concrete and packed-earth floors are problems. ComfortStall floors insulate from -70 to 175 degrees F.
Across the country in Ithaca, New York, a thousand horses a year at Cornell University Veterinary Hospital, one of the top 3 veterinarian hospitals in USA, recover from surgery on a ComfortStall. “The foam under-surface padding has held up very well,” reports Ann Townsend-Pors, LVT, Anesthesia Department. “We have had the original foam in all of the recovery stalls since 2005. Overall, it appears to be the best surface we have come across.”
Thanks to the therapeutic properties of ComfortStall’s level surface that springs back with every step, joints, tendons and ligaments are supported for improved joint health, movement, flexibility and hoof quality. The need for standing wraps or stable bandages virtually disappears because the rebound from every step on ComfortStall’s cushioned flooring massages the horse’s frogs and continually stimulates blood circulation.
Across the Atlantic, at the Lisadell Equine Hospital in Follistown, Ireland, ComfortStall performs on all counts. “We have found the floor to be very hard wearing, with good grip even when wet. It is not overly soft, yet allows enough give for horses to lie comfortably until they are ready to arise post-anesthetic,” according to Simon Hennessy, MVB MSc CertAVP(ESO)(ESST) MRCVS DipECVS.
ComfortStall’s non-slip, non-abrasive surface eliminates hock sores. The horses’ body weight sinks their hooves down into the padded floor, so they can lie down and get up with ease. ComfortStall provides recumbent whole-body support and the needed ‘give’ under the hip, shoulder and pastern bones when the horse lies down. Demonstrating improved quality of rest, horses have been seen sleeping on bare ComfortStall flooring for hours at a time, getting their all-important REM sleep.
Less bedding – just enough to absorb urine – is all that’s needed with ComfortStall, so dust from straw or shavings no longer assaults the respiratory systems of horses and the people who care for them. Happily, the need for less bedding reduces the cost of buying, cleaning and disposing of it. Those cost savings typically offset the cost of buying and installing ComfortStall within six months to a year.
Every horse can have the flooring that equine rehabilitation experts have come to rely on; find out more about ComfortStall Orthopedic Sealed Flooring System.
