How do you cope with...

[Rocket's mom]

I'm at my wits end with trying to keep my horses' shelter mucked out during the cold winter temps. How do you muck when their poo is frozen solid to the ground? Then what do you do when it thaws and turns to a big muddy, poopy mess? I can't keep up with it and it's driving me crazy! I've all but given up and waiting till warmer weather to do a huge muck out with the tractor. What are some of your tips or tricks to keep up with frozen poo??

 

[Reble]

I'm at my wits end with trying to keep my horses' shelter mucked out during the cold winter temps. How do you muck when their poo is frozen solid to the ground? Then what do you do when it thaws and turns to a big muddy, poopy mess? I can't keep up with it and it's driving me crazy! I've all but given up and waiting till warmer weather to do a huge muck out with the tractor. What are some of your tips or tricks to keep up with frozen poo??

Our run in and stalls have wooden horse pellets, we do not wet them down, we let the horses do that, this might help with the freezing, if we cannot use wheel barrow, we use large pails for mucking out.

No great tips here, just cannot wait for spring,

 

[chandab]

I'm at my wits end with trying to keep my horses' shelter mucked out during the cold winter temps. How do you muck when their poo is frozen solid to the ground? Then what do you do when it thaws and turns to a big muddy, poopy mess? I can't keep up with it and it's driving me crazy! I've all but given up and waiting till warmer weather to do a huge muck out with the tractor. What are some of your tips or tricks to keep up with frozen poo??

Most aren't going to like my answer... I don't! We are frozen solid and their poops are frozen to the ground before I get out, so I don't clean much during the winter, but... Then, I have to spend around 2 weeks in the spring cleaning shelters and along fencelines, so the tractor can haul it all away. I do try to keep their stalls clean, but they don't get too bad, as they only go in them for hard feed twice a day; the cats use the stalls more than the horses in winter.

And, I do try to keep the manure raked away from the feeders, but most of that's frozen solid too.

 

[user 3234]

Live in Arizona or Florida

 

[copperwood farm]

Try a hard rake.. that sometimes loosens up the piles. Otherwise, put gloves on and hand pick the frozen little piles. It does take some time ,but the run-in will be clean, and you usually have lots of helpers.

 

[DarkhHorseFarms]

Any chance I get when it warms up just a little...I rake & rake & rake (hard rake) all the poop I can. Take it out with a muck bucket because the cart wont go thru the mud and snow very well.

Then dump a whole bale of shavings into the pen and spread them out. They soak up water and muck and make it easier to clean when it finally warms up.

Then the shavings and poop I do rake out I put into my round pen to make the ground better and not dusty.

 

[Relic]

Around here l muck the huts twice a day morning and late afternoon. Most mares here are pigs they'll head for a hut just to do business but l'm lucky they only poop in there no pee. Stallions are done every 3 days but they are a breeze they leave tall stud piles and never do business in there huts. Paddocks are also picked daily and l usually just use a snow shovel and if they are real frozen down just a regular metal shovel and some power behind it and they pop loose..

l let my other half haul the daily wheelbarrows usually 5 overflowing ones away.. l don't like that part to far and tippy.

 

[MindyLee]

I just figured out how to get my "horse hatin" hubby to muck stalls for me while Im at work!

 

[Miniv]

We use a metal snow type shovel to scrape with. But usually we wait for a break in the weather and rake like crazy.

Fortunately most of our areas are larger and Larry can drive into them with the ATV and a small homemade drag.

 

[shorthorsemom]

I use a hard metal garden rake. Has short tines, and I wack the heck out of the poos and then shovel them into a muck bucket. I use the wheel barrow if the snow isn't deep. I drag the muck bucket right out to the field, if you tie a rope on the handle you can drag it along easier without stooping. I try to do this in the afternoon because even a little sun will help them soften just a wee bit so you can wack them off the ground. During our recent blizzard I let them lay and am now dealing with them layer by layer. I can't wait until spring. Am very sorry I didn't replenish my pea gravel before winter. When I had a nice thick layer of gravel the poos didn't stick. Best wishes and good luck.

 

[Dona]

Well....I don't really have a problem of the pea/poop freezing to the ground so much. But I DO have a problem with how to clean out the stalls, as we've had so much snow this month, I can't get our manure cart outside to dump! We've had drifts up to 6' high all around the barn...so the horses can't even get out! I don't want to create a huge manure pile that I'll have to deal with in the spring. So, what to do? The horses have been stalled so much this month, which make's it worse. I can't stand it when their stalls get wet...so I was just adding new shavings over the top...and it was starting to build up. Their stalls were getting really bad until we had a recent thaw which melted enough snow that I could drag the cart to the fence & "fling" the poop out onto the field on the other side. I've been "stripping" stalls this week...which is a very slow process, but I'm getting there. I'll feel SO much better, when they have nice, new, fluffy, shavings in all their stalls again. Hopefully, the worse winter weather is past & I can keep up with them now, as I have foals arriving in March!

 

[MeadowRidge Farm]

I use a plastic muck fork in the run in daily (about 15 x 60) I'm in northern WI and the poop freezes but it never sticks tight to the ground in there, and the water dont freeze solid in there either..just a easy to break film every day. It is totally enclosed except for a small door for them to go outside. In the morning, I just open the sliding door up and rake it out. its also attached to our main barn so that might help with heat too. Outside, its easy..hubby or son go in the drylot every few days and scrape out the frozen little poopies with the skidsteer. They always seem to go in on area, so its easy. The barn is no problem in winter. I use my trusty wheelbarrel and put it all on a pile outside the barn, and when the pile is BIG enough for a manure spreader full..it gets hauled out to the field.

 

[Katiean]

I use a metal pitch fork to break things up and then I can use my manure fork to get all of the little stuff. I also never use a wheel barrow. I use muck buckets. I started using them on the track and never quit. Actually they make 2 sizes of muck buckets and the small one fits a trash compactor bag and I can bag my horse poo and give it away to back yard gardeners that don't need a truck load. I also had someone come last year and clean my chicken coop for the poo. It was fine with me. That way I didn't have to do it.

 

[mmmorgans]

In the northern states - and into Canada - it sometimes gets down to minus 40 - and then add a wind chill factor - so minus 50. The poop and pee are frozen in minutes - so there is no way that it is reasonable to keep everything as clean as I would like. That is the way it is when you live in that type of climate. Not to mention - a person can't stay outside for any length of time when it is that cold!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Minimor]

Our sheds are heavily bedded with straw, so poop doesn't freeze down. It does, however, get well scattered when goofy little horses get charging and spinning around in their sheds. I long ago gave up trying to fork out the poop--I take my muck bucket and a pair of heavy gloves, and chuck all the frozen turds out by hand! It's the quickest, most efficient way to clean--I figure I'm just about the fastest frozen horse pucky picker around.

Since this time of year all my shed cleaning gets done in the dark, after I get home from work, and since our loose housing sheds don't have hydro to them, it's the best way to get the cleaning done in the dark--it's all by feel!!

This winter I've been cleaning most of the sheds once a day. There are 3, though, that I haven't cleaned in about 3 weeks now. It was just taking too long and on the cold nights I would get much too cold before I finished--so those 3 sheds have just been left, and every few days I add more straw on top--they will have a major amount to clean out once the weather warms up, but for now the horses always have a good bed, with fresh straw on top.

 

[disneyhorse]

Wow. I had no idea there was such an effort for this.

Doesn't freeze here, but I've enjoyed reading your trials and tribulations!

Andrea