Is mooses a word?
We all love them. Some are stupid and don't really work, but others actually save us a lot of time, money, and energy in the process. Today I want to talk about something that SO many horse owners struggle with, but only those who actually do the dirty work probably relate to. Messy Stalls. Messy Horses. Disaster Zones.
Maxwell isn't a particularly messy creature, but he DOES consume 15 gallons of water and roughly 20 pounds of hay, and 14 pounds of alfalfa pellets for the 12 hours that he is in his stall during the day. All that hay and all that water gotta go somewhere, right?! The sheer volume of manure makes his stall a bit difficult. He drinks a healthy 15 gallons of water per day, thanks to his alfalfa diet. This also causes an excess amount of urine, due to the extra protein he gets from the alfalfa. Pee city!!! I'm lucky because he does have a dedicated pee zone, and he's not much of a stall walker, so he doesn't do the toss and serve that many other geldings do in their stall. I clean stalls twice a week at Maxwell's barn, and clean his stall every single day I go out there. (yes, all the stalls are done every day, I'm just on the hook for it twice a week)... I'm a bit of a perfectionist with the stalls, and therefore it takes me a little bit longer to get them done than the average person. However I've implemented a couple of techniques which really help me breeze through stalls, and save a bit of money (shavings) in the process.
The first piece of advice I have for a messy horse is to get to know their pattern. Figure out where they go (most have a preference and go in the same places each day). I can tell you where every horse in the barn enjoys peeing. It's important to identify the pee location prior to clean up, so that you don't accidentally scoop a pile of pee and mix it with clean shavings. Maxwell's stall can be a bit overwhelming sometimes, so I usually start by picking up all the obvious piles of manure. Max doesn't poop perfect poop balls (never has) but he has a well formed "pile" for each manure movement he makes. Sometimes they get rolled up underneath some fresh looking shavings and it requires some extra attention (more on that below). I remove all the big obvious piles I can find in the stall, while taking care to remove hay remnants that might be left-overs or mixed in with the shavings.
Once we've removed as many obvious piles of crap that we can, I go to the pee spot. For most stalls (including Max's) I rake back the top layer of "fresh" shavings on top of the pee, since it soaks down and seemingly disappears (if you're bedded deep enough with an absorbent bedding). I take my time carefully removing all the urine before I perform the next steps.
There is one particular horse at my barn who is a poop shuffling monster. He DOES poop perfect balls, so he really has no excuse, but we just can't seem to figure out what in the world he does to create such a mess in his stall. He doesn't stall walk, but it sure looks like he might based on the way his stall looks at the end of the day. For these difficult stalls where everything is mixed in, or once you've removed obvious piles and urine, this is the best thing I've done....BANKING. If you've ever taken up professional stall cleaning ( I don't recommend it), you've probably learned this neat little task before. I drag all the bedding away from a back wall of the stall to start. Then? Simply take a pitch fork full of shavings and kind of fling it against the wall. It's awkward at first, but once you have the flick of your wrist down, it's amazing. The shavings form a nice little mountain, and the poop rolls down the mountain to be collected at the base. It's one of the most gratifying things I do with my time, building those shaving mountains and watching poop roll down them and separate from the shavings so nicely for me. I continue until I've banked the entire stall. Sometimes you have to move down the wall, or pick another wall, depending on how deeply bedded the stall is. But it's SO worth it, especially if your horse poops everywhere, or you have a hard time leaving a stall with all those little specs of poop that somehow separate themselves from the rest of the pile. PLUS this gives you the opportunity to do a 'fluff and refresh' of the bedding. All the bedding gets turned over, and some fresh, unused bedding that built up along the sides of the stall is mixed into the tired bedding, prolonging it's overall life.
The real life hack, though, is HOW you bed the stall. Every person has their way. I've tried to under bed, over bed, and tried different materials to bed with. Your preference might be different than that of mine or my barn owner's, but honestly, I think it comes down to the individual horse and it's specific bathroom habits (and health needs in some cases).
Probably the 4 most notable types of bedding for a horse's stall include Fine Flake Shavings, Flake Shavings, Pelletized Bedding, and Straw.
Small flake shavings are my top pick. Easier to sort through than the larger flakes, they make stall cleaning go a little bit quicker. I have a love-hate relationship with Tractor Supply's brand, as the consistency of the flakes varies by batch, as does the weight of the bag. Sometimes Max only requires two bags in a 12x12 to achieve sufficient bedding coverage, and sometimes it takes 4 bags. It's very inconsistent. The reason I choose to stick with this brand, is that they've done nothing to offend me to the point of NOT using them, especially when they're averaging $1.00-1.50 less than any other brand of fine flake shavings in the area.
Flake, or "Large Flake" shavings are my pet peeve. I've actually been recommended them by more than one vet and farrier, but I just can't bring myself to bed my horse's stall with them. Much harder to sort between flake and poop, these suckers get my blood pressure up every time I clean a stall bedded with them. The vet makes a great point, however, that the larger flake bedding provides the least amount of dust. If your horse has respiratory issues, or you worry about the dustiness of your bedding, larger flake bedding might be an option for you. Two past farriers also recommended large flake shavings, especially on top of mats, because there is more absorption flake per flake verses that of fine flake or 'sawdust' type shavings. I totally get that. It's super important to not allow your horse to stand in his urine all day, and if bigger flakes help that, by all means, use them. I just cannot stand them, and go through them MUCH MUCH quicker than I otherwise would. They have their place, but their place is NOT in Max's stall!
Pelletized bedding is my second favorite choice. It used to be my first, but there are two reasons why it makes second on my list. The first reason is just the ease of use. To use this bedding *properly*, it requires a wheel barrow (or dumping in the stall if you fancy all that) and water. I put one bag in at a time, soak the appropriate amount of water with said bag, dump into stall, spread, and repeat. 4 times. It takes at LEAST 15 minutes for me to bed each stall using 4 bags of pelletized bedding. That being said, I actually really LOVE this bedding when it has been put down properly. It does a phenomenal job of absorbing moisture while maintaining its integrity a lot longer than that of traditional flake shavings. The kicker, though, is making sure you turn the bedding every day. Some people don't do this, and I will never understand why, but if you don't turn this bedding and actually MIX the messier portions with the clean, it won't work out for you very well. It's designed to hold a little bit of 'yuck' and when you mix it into the clean stuff, it's like magic. The reason this gets another mark off, though, is again thanks to my farrier. Because this stuff does such a phenomenal job of absorbing moisture, it also holds that moisture for a lot longer before becoming unusable. This means, that while the bedding may not look actively wet, it's got a lot of 'wet' inside, and a horse standing in it for an extended period of time could suffer an adverse reaction via the hoof. I found this to be true with my own horse, and once I removed the pelleted bedding from his stall and swapped back to fine flake, his feet held up a LOT more, and a LOT less moisture damage was seen in his feet at each visit.
Straw is probably the oldest type of bedding. I've actually never used it myself, because I loathe it, but it does have its place, and is still commonly used in places like race tracks. While it absorbs quite a bit, I can't even imagine trying to sift through all that to get those magical poop balls out. Not to mention, how do you identify soiled straw (urine soaked) from not? It's all yellow is it not? I dunno. I hate it. And it drives me insane when Maxwell is a bit low on shavings, and makes it a point to drag his hay to his urine spot to achieve the same goal as straw bedding would serve...Icky. Straw is also a great choice for a low dust option, however, for horses who require special attention to that. It's also SO nice to take a nap in.
The most exciting part about this post is coming now. We've explored that magical banking maneuver to breeze through stall cleaning....but what about those messy misters (and some misses, too believe it or not!) that mix it all together into a chopped salad for you to pick through? This is something my barn owner started doing with her two draft horses, and I've adopted the idea, modified it a bit, and implemented it in my own horse's stall last week. Take two of the bests, and make the magnificent, no? In my barn owner's situation, she takes two bags of pelletized bedding and spreads it (unsoaked) around her horses' stalls as a base. Then she'll take 4 bags of fine flake shavings and place that on top. It works really well for those two horses, and seems to keep her super messy (that poop shuffling monster I spoke of earlier) horse's stall fresh for ALMOST a week. This works well for her guys because they're huge, with dinner plate sized feet. The little pelletized bedding pieces (look like pelleted feed, maybe a bit thicker) gets crushed under their feet, and becomes a wonderful absorbing base layer for the stall. I bed Maxwell's stall a little bit differently, and it's something you guys should consider as well:
For Max, in a 12x12 stall on mats, I lightly soaked the pelletized bedding in the wheel barrow first. The reason I soak my pellets instead of just tossing them in like my barn owner does for her big guys, is because I have a Thoroughbred. A Thoroughbred with sensitive soles. I don't want to make him walk around on pokey pellets all the time. I also do it because I think the pellets last a bit longer when they've been expanded (believe it or not). I spread ONE bag of pelletized bedding as the base layer on the mats, taking extra care to ensure that a sufficient amount covers the areas where Maxwell is known to pee. Then I take 2-4 bags of fine flake shavings and place them on top. 2-4 because it depends on the "volume" of the bags. This past Sunday I did 1 bag of pellets and 2 bags of fine flake shavings. By Tuesday, the stall still had that "fresh shavings" look to it, and smelled great too. I still do my banking movements to sort through the shavings, allowing the pelleted (which looks more like saw dust once it's expanded, or crushed in the case of the draft horses) bedding and fine flake shavings to mix. When I redistributed the shavings around the stall (every stall needs the shavings flipped and fluffed, c'mon!) it STILL had that wonderful fresh shavings look. Today is Thursday, and I'll be interested to see how the stall cleans up tonight. Usually I can get away with 2-4 bags of shavings a week, the stall needing to be re-bedded by Saturday or Sunday most weeks. We're already ahead of the curve as of Tuesday, so I'm hopeful we might get a week and a half out of these suckers....I'll be sure to clue you all in later on. But seriously, this technique really does help absorb excess urine that otherwise ruins countless shavings, and leaves many horses standing in urine.
What are your stall bedding habits? What's your favorite technique to cleaning a stall?
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