[SweetIron]

I thought that this did fit into the training section so I put it here
Either this fall or next spring, we want to build a small "arena" to ride in. Fenced off; I thought of a roundpen but I was thinking maybe something oval? See, our horses need some freshening up in the riding dept; Cuesta was not ridden since last fall and Emma was last ridden for about 10 mins by my fiancee last month. We stopped because of nerves; see, we have a pasture but the posts are T-post and I am paranoid of getting thrown and impaled by one; and not ready to ride them out of confinement as of yet.
What would be a nice sized area? We have a space that is roughly 20 feet by 60 feet that I have in mind. I want to use this style of fencing that my trainer has in his large roundpen that he trains cart horses in (a pic..)

I liked riding in this setup. There is actually heavy wire/grid stuff that is framed in the wood that you see here.
Your thoughts or advice?

[cd_horton]

For colt starting a 60'-80' diameter round pen is a good size...but for riding this may not be ideal. An area of about 80' X 160' will let you lope decent circles but an ideal size would be 120' X 200'. If you wont be using cattle and dont need the fence, maybe you could just outline the area with railroad ties and prepare the ground within that area or have proper footing hauled in if needed.

[Canadian Sage]

The smallest I would go, is 60' X 120'. My trainer's indoor areana is that big, its smalll, but it works.

The bigger, the better...at least I always say, you can never have TOO much room.

[bnttyra]

Although a fence is not necessary, I have found that my mares have a tendency to try to "wander" off in the direction of the 2 sides that are currently unfenced. The fence definitely gives them the boundry they need. We had a similar issue, on what size arena to build. When we are done it will be 100'x200' and we came to this size based on what type of disciplines we intended to train the horses in. The western pleasure didn't call for an arena that big but the reining and cutting did. Maybe you need to decide based on what you want to do with them and obviously, what space you have available. We have 10 acres so it was not an issue of space for us.

[LittleDudeAlert]

If you are using a round pen then I don't know. I don't know how big they should be. If you are making a square shaped arena I wouold make sure your horse could fit at least 7-8 strides at the canter on each rail.

[horseyfrk145]

we have a huge jumping one thats about 160' x 200' and our dressage arena is normal size
the round pen is small, too small, so if you are doing just one arena/round pen i would advise about 80-120' by 160-200' depending on your availible resources, space and price range