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Dry lot pee spot conundrum

My fatty pony is in the dry lot until the grass dies, and I need management ideas for the pee spot.

Where the hay net is, the loose bits fall on the ground, and he pees on them. Exclusively. Despite my scraping it daily, it becomes a gross pee-mud hole with rotten hay bits stuck in it that never dries. And I don’t like him standing in it. I plan to put all-weather footing in before winter, but for now it’s dirt. Now, I can probably configure a feeder that keeps most of the hay off the ground, but I have a feeling he’s still going to pee in front of the hay, and I can’t change the net hanging spot because the rest of the fence is electric. I would love to convince him to pee elsewhere, but I don’t see how I can do that. He has designated separate pooping and sleeping areas well away from the pee-mud.

So, what can I do in the meantime? Sand? Or would that just end up mixing up with the mud and make a mess? Rock? At least then he wouldn’t be standing directly on the pee-mud-hay. :roll_eyes: Other ideas welcome!

My first thought is what a about a mat with enough shavings to prevent splatter. Just scrape up every day?

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Scoop up the peed on hay and dump it where you want him to pee. Put a thin layer of shavings under the hay bag so it doesn’t smell like pee. He will probably still pee on it tor a while. Scoop up those peed on shavings and put them with the peed on hay in your preferred pee spot. Soon there will be an area with bits of hay and shavings that all smell like pee and he will hopefully choose to pee there instead. I moved my mare’s pee spot this way in a matter of days. (Whew, ten “pees” in one paragraph.)

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Put sweet pdz or pine pellets on it to dry up the pee spot. Then, muck it out as needed

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The worry with adding bedding outside is that it will just hold onto the moisture.

I would be interested to hear if @Snowdenfarm’s idea worked to move the pee spot.

I end up with a stinky pee spot (well two of them) in the paddock(s) from my mares. I have found adding some PDZ does help with the stench, but clearly that will not help with the wet.

I like the idea of adding a mat under the hay bag. No bedding. And hopefully your horse (unlike mine) got the memo that horses do not like to pee on bare mats.

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I’d lay down some Sweet PDZ, then get a big water tub to put under the net to 1) catch the hay and 2) keep him from peeing there

You could try the mat option first as well

I have a friend who basically used @Snowdenfarm 's method to move her mare’s pee spot. I was going to try it with my gelding who did exactly what the OP’s gelding does (although I’m not sure it would have worked because my horse lived in a more open paddock and I think the shavings might have blown away), but then my farrier commented about how much better his feet were after he started doing this (without knowing he was doing it). We live in a very dry climate and I think he knew his feet needed the moisture, so he manufactured some moisture for him to stand it. It also reduced the pee splash (which my boy is very sensitive about!) in a way I don’t think just shavings would have. So I never moved the pee spot, despite it being gross. He has since moved out to herd pasture living (without grass…because we don’t really have grass here) and his feet aren’t as good and I’m going to have to put front shoes on for the summer.

Yeah, I considered this and I think it would just make the spot a bigger mess right now. Adding mats might be an option. I’ve tried moving the pee hay to a new spot to encourage relocation, but it doesn’t interest him. Perhaps a mat in the current spot plus moving the pee spot will convince him… but I still need to put something down for him to pee on in a new spot that isn’t hay.

Of course, by the time I get this all figured out the grass will probably be dead enough for him to go out! :joy:

Some horses just refuse to pee where it will splatter back on them ( 1 have 3). My 2 mares pee in the exact same way as yours, except they have a huge pile of hay on a mat to eat from overnight. They eat 95% and the rest is peeled on which is fine by me.

I would suggest putting some shavings down in that spot.

If you want to relocate the spot, I would put something soft down somewhere else. Probably a load of sand if you don’t want to create a bedding muck/hay muck mess somewhere else. Some geldings just won’t pee where it splashes, so he’s probably using the hay waste area because of some splash control. He might also like a big sandy area to lay down in/roll. So, maybe put a mat or tub under the net but give him a more desirable option in another location (rather than just trying to make current spot less desirable).

My horse is a mega princess in this regard. Even out on grass, he would only pee where there was some really tall grass away from his primary grazing area. Until his pee started killing that grass. I had his stall open to the pasture (a couple acres at least) during the day, and he would often come all the way into the stall to pee in the shavings.

Dry stall, possibly with lime as a base layer of lime in the pee spot to dry it out. Something soft where you do want him to pee.

I put out a bag or two of stall pellets for my mare to pee in. She has a large-ish dry lot pen that is dirt. She eats off of mats so I don’t have the problem of her peeing in the hay…it doesn’t last long enough for that anyway. I probably use one or two bags/month.

She hates splashing so I just dump a couple bags of pellets for her highness to pee in. I wouldn’t want to splash either.

Susan