Barn sign maker
Pick a preset like Do Not Feed or No Treats Please — or type your own wording — and download a bold, full-page sign that's readable from across the aisle. Free PDF, sized for US Letter or A4.
Tap a preset below to fill it in, then edit freely.
Common barn signs
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DO NOT FEED
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A Practical Guide to Barn & Stall Signs
Every boarding and lesson barn eventually grows the same small collection of signs: Do Not Feed on the stall of the horse with the strict diet, Please Keep Gate Closed on the paddock everyone cuts through, a caution on the one who nips. They work because they speak before you can — to visiting families, new boarders' guests, the farrier's apprentice, anyone who doesn't know the barn's unwritten rules yet. This guide covers which signs earn their spot, where to hang them, and what a printed notice sign can and can't do.
Why feeding signs exist
The classic barn incident isn't dramatic — it's a visitor with a carrot. For most horses that's harmless; for a horse on a restricted diet, a weight-management program, or medical feed management, unsupervised treats undo careful work, and for a horse that's learned to mug people for food, every hand-fed treat trains the habit deeper. Owners can't brief every person who walks down the aisle. A feeding sign is the briefing, posted where the temptation happens.
Matching the sign to the situation
Pick the gentlest wording that actually does the job. A blanket Do Not Feed on every stall teaches visitors to ignore signs; reserving it for the horses where it matters keeps it meaningful. The softer steps — No Treats Please, Ask Before Feeding — cover owner preference without crying wolf, while behavior cautions like May Bite are about keeping unfamiliar hands at a respectful distance. The table below maps each preset to its real use.
Which sign, when — preset-by-preset
| Sign | When barns use it |
|---|---|
| Do Not Feed | The hard rule: restricted diets, metabolic horses, medical feed management — treats genuinely cause harm here. |
| No Treats Please | The polite default for easy keepers, weight-program horses, and horses that get mouthy when hand-fed. |
| Ask Before Feeding | Owner wants control, not a ban — fine with treats on their terms. Common at lesson barns with visiting families. |
| On a Special Diet | Explains the why behind a feeding rule — useful where visitors are more likely to comply when given a reason. |
| Please Keep Gate Closed | Paddock and arena gates on busy paths; the sign backs up the latch everyone forgets. |
| Do Not Enter Stall | Horses that guard their space, new arrivals settling in, or any stall where staff-only handling is the rule. |
| Caution: May Bite | An honest heads-up at muzzle height — keeps strangers' fingers out of the bars without drama. |
| Caution: Kicks | Posted on the stall and, at shows, sometimes paired with a red ribbon in the tail — the traditional kicker's warning. |
Every preset is editable before you download — adjust the wording to your barn's voice.
Placement, durability, legibility
Hang signs at adult eye level and above muzzle reach — a sign a horse can lip will be on the aisle floor by Thursday. Laminate everything; barn air is dust and humidity. And resist the urge to stack rules on one page: a sign is read in the two seconds someone walks past, so one message in the biggest type the page allows beats five rules in small print. This generator sizes the type automatically — shorter wording prints bigger.
What these signs are not
These are courtesy and housekeeping notices, not legal signage. Many US states have equine activity liability statutes that call for official warning signs with specific statutory wording — sometimes down to letter sizing — and those should be produced from your state's actual requirements, not a general-purpose tool. They're also not medical instructions: a sign keeps strangers from interfering, but the horse's real care plan lives with the owner, the barn manager, and the stall card.
Why not just type it in Word?
A sign is the simplest possible document, which is exactly why Word makes it annoying: you type four words, then spend ten minutes nudging font sizes to fill the page, fixing margins the printer clips, and centering text that refuses to stay centered. Here the layout is the product — pick the wording, and the PDF comes out full-page, bordered, and sized to be read from across the aisle on the first try.
Barn sign questions, answered
- Why do barns put Do Not Feed signs on stalls?
- Because well-meaning visitors feed treats, and for some horses that's a real problem: horses on restricted or special diets, horses with metabolic conditions, easy keepers on weight programs, and horses that have learned to nip when hand-fed. A clear sign does the awkward social work for you — it tells visiting families, new boarders' guests, and lesson kids what the rule is before anyone has to be corrected in person.
- Should I use "Do Not Feed" or "Ask Before Feeding"?
- Treat them as steps on a ladder. "Do Not Feed" is the hard rule for horses where treats genuinely cause trouble — diet, medical management, or nipping. "Ask Before Feeding" and "No Treats Please" are the softer versions for horses where the owner just wants control over what and how much. Softer wording gets better compliance from visitors when a hard rule isn't actually needed, so don't default everything to Do Not Feed.
- Where should a stall sign be posted?
- At adult eye level on the stall front, above muzzle reach — horses chew, rub, and pull anything they can lip. Keep it clear of the latch and feed-door hardware, and angle it to face the aisle where people actually approach. Laminate the sign or use a sheet protector; barn dust, splashing water buckets, and humidity wreck bare paper in days.
- Is this the same as an equine liability warning sign?
- No. Many US states have equine activity liability statutes that call for official warning signage with specific statutory wording, sizing, and placement — those signs should come from your state's requirements, not a general-purpose generator, and this tool deliberately doesn't produce them. The signs here are courtesy and housekeeping notices: feeding rules, gate reminders, and behavior cautions for everyday barn traffic.
- What makes a barn sign readable from a distance?
- Three things: size, contrast, and restraint. Big bold capitals in plain black-on-white survive both distance and black-and-white printers; a common rule of thumb is roughly one inch of letter height per ten feet of reading distance. And keep one message per sign — a sign that says Do Not Feed plus three other rules in smaller print effectively says nothing from across the aisle.
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