Main Building and Indoor Arena

Welcome to the MSU Horse Teaching and Research Center walking tour. Our first stop is our main building and indoor riding arena.This building includes our managers office, the restrooms, and a classroom area. When you look inside our classroom, you can see a variety of awards in the trophy case that was donated by the family of a former student, Amanda Awalt, in her memory. Most of the horses on this farm are purebred Arabians that were bred here, foaled, and raised, and trained by our MSU students. One of the most distinguishing features of our MSU Horse programs is that our animals are used primarily for teaching. Our students are exposed to working with a variety of age groups of horses and each Spring they are responsible for preparing on average twenty horses for our annual sale.

As we move past the classroom and through the inner doors, we will enter the indoor riding arena’s observation area. Our arena is 80 x 180 feet and is where our horsemanship and training classes are held. If you come into our arena during a school day you may observe our students working with the young horses or in horsemanship classes. We may also have a round pen set up in the far end of the arena where our young horses experience their first rides. It's always safer to get on a horse for the first time in a smaller confined space as opposed to an entire arena. We also are fortunate enough to have a heating system in our arena. If you look at the ceiling, we have some boxes that are actually furnaces connected to long tubes that blow the warmer air throughout the arena. This makes the arena more comfortable during the winter teaching sessions for both the students and the instructors! The arena is only heated to about 40 degrees to decrease costs and make sure the horses don’t getting too warm while exercising.