BTB: Clean a stall and conserve bedding!

Posted: 26 Dec 2010 02:28 PM PST

There was a time when horses enjoyed deep, soft bedding. Only 5-7 years ago Harv stood in bedding that came almost to the middle of his cannon bone. Oh, those were the days! But now with the cost of shavings/bedding you can put your horse in a newly bedded stall and still see most of the hoof :-). Yep, it's slim pickins --pardon the barnworker pun. As a barn worker who also boards, I often think about trying to balance costs to the barn and comfort/health of the horse.

So how do you maintain a stall on minimal bedding? I will share with you my method. I've met other workers who have come up with the same solution, so I guess it may not be an original idea, but here goes...

Stalls by Stacey

Step 1: The environmental scan. Survey the stall. Identify concentrated areas of pure waste product whether liquid or solid.

Step 2. Bring Mohammed to the Mountain. Mohammed is the wheelbarrow. Please, please, pull the wheelbarrow at least part-way inside the stall. Why? Well this limits the amount of crap that gets tossed a) into the aisle b) onto passing boarders and c) onto equipment and/or tack boxes stored on the opposite wall. Finding shavings and poop on my tack box is a big pet peeve of mine.

Step 3. The surgical strike. Target concentrated areas of waste products. Lift with the pitchfork, shake out shavings, and deposit in the wheelbarrow. When finished, the wheelbarrow should contain 85% waste and saturated bedding, 15% marginal bedding (dark/damp), and 0% dry shavings/ bedding.

Step 4. Picky picky picky. This is the most time consuming part -- pick and sift, pick and sift, and when you think you're done, turn the sifted stuff over again and pick some more. During this process, all bedding is sifted and the floor exposed. This is also where you make the judgement call on the marginal bedding, e.g., it's dark, but not that bad. Pile dry shavings into one small area of the stall. Dust mat with lime or stall freshener if you've got it.

Hint: For marginal bedding, I usually keep or toss by the weight of the bedding. If it feels mch heavier than a dry forkful of the same stuff, out it goes.

You should now have dry, poop-free bedding, and the wheelbarrow should have less than 10% dry bedding in it. If you look in the wheelbarrow and see a lot of dry bedding, you need to work on your technique.

Step 5. The distribution of wealth. Working from the lovely pile of dry bedding, pick up forkful by forkful and scatter the savings toward/across the middle of the stall,. Pick out the stray waste balls you will inevitably find. Spread/fluff the bedding into the middle of the stall. Add shavings or pellets as needed -- usually 1/3 bag shavings or 1/2 bag pellets ($3ish/day).

Step 6. Giving the brushoff. This is a controversial point, at least at some barns. Take a broom, or a rake, and pull any shavings about a foot or two away from the wall, so that bedding is a smaller square within the square of the stall. Oh, no! you might say. They'll get cast!

Well, guess what? With the pelleted bedding, and even shavings these days, there just ain't enuf bedding in the stall to create much of an uneven surface, plus horses start kicking the bedding out to the edges the minute they get into the stall. The bedding does the horse the most good when it is in the middle of the stall (which is where they stand most of the time). Leave a bedding free area for hay, and pull any shavings out from under the water bucket. Level out the bedding in the middle.

Summary
In these days of $6/bag shavings and $7/bag Streufex, the goal is to put the bedding where the horse spends most of his/her time. It drives me bananas when workers evenly distribute the shavings all the way across the stall, including where the hay is thrown and under the water bucket(s). When the heck does the horse stand under the water bucket? Why the heck does the hay need to rest on 1/8 bag of bedding? What good does it do there?

In this new world of "thin is in" bedding, how do you all cope???

Lovelly Pets