Would be interested to know how you housebreak a horse.
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No kidding. I have a mare whose preference is to pee on bare mats in front of her haybag. Barring having BOTH bare mats and the hay net available in the same place, she’ll happily target the bare mats of the run in (gag) or wherever I hang the haybag away from the mats.
Can I send her to you, Bluey? :lol:
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Add me to the list that would like to know this as well.
Mine like to pee on the concrete floor in the run-in portion of the barn.
Apparently they didn’t get the memo that horses don’t like to pee on hard flat surfaces. :mad:
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When we moved to the plains and put up horse pens, we watched how the flow was thru those, remodeled a few times for better flow, watched where horses liked to go to the bathroom and incorporated that into our design.
Horses have spots they go because, well, only horses know, as they come and go, near water and along a fence line or in a designated corner.
They may have more than one.
We honor their preferences and make that their bathroom by, any time a horse may miss, clean it well and dump it in the bathroom spot.
Maybe a new horse is just learning and not honoring those places, or maybe wanting to mark it’s territory, or the weather was ugly out there and under the shed was handier, whatever reason, the few times there is a pile in the wrong place, out to the bathroom spot it goes.
We clean that, if several horses using it, daily, if only a couple, weekly, if the weather is very wet, rare here, we may even go a month between cleanings.
When we clean, we leave a bit there, is what they will go by when they come around, smell and then leave their deposit there.
You have to be careful to find a spot they really are attracted to and be patient.
Some horses don’t need training, they catch on right away when new and smelling around, others may take a few days.
Never had one not learn and be practically 100% clean.
That works in large pens, pastures and also in stalls that are not so tiny there is no way a horse can miss stepping on it.
Some of our race horse training barn stalls were 10’ x 10’ and even in those, horses would use one corner only for a bathroom, if you kept that as a designated spot, rarely missing.
A friend tells us our horses are “housebroke”.
I have one of those.
The other day she came running up to the barn (from the pasture) and peed under the over hang. On the bare mat. After she got a drink and wandered back out to the pasture. She is another that did not get the memo that horses do not like to pee on solid surfaces. Lots of soft places to pee between where she was and where she ended up.
Interesting theory.
I still can not see this working.
If for no other reason I am not leaving manure mess sitting around for a month. Eek.
I clean daily (the paddocks and stalls). I have one horse that is neat and always goes in a similar spot, away from where the food is, away from the shelter.
The above mentioned mare could not care one hoot where others go. If she is eating from the round bale she lifts her tail and goes where she is standing, or, as I said already, she looks for the most not appropriate spot and goes there (she has been known to turn around and manure or pee right on the round bale).
I can not move the barn and overhang so I can not just change my set-up around to accommodate her desire to go there. Though I know she would just go wherever I moved it to anyway.
It is great that your horses appear to cooperate with your plan. I am certain mine would not.
Another great theory. Just like the one that says horses will not pee on solid surfaces. When you have a horse that will pee on their hay that theory just does not work.
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Well, there are times were we clean daily and spread and others we leave their piles in their spot and it doesn’t seem to make any difference in flies or general cleanliness and we have many birds, tumblebugs and other insects that love it.
A friend trained all her many broodmares and their foals to a big pile in the middle of a big pen, that she had someone come haul off once a month.
Every horse in the large place used that for a bathroom, rarely you would find anything anywhere else.
Even older foals would leave their mother to go there to do their business.
With so many horses in one place, that pile in a month was a couple feet tall.
Now, we are in the semi-desert, where it doesn’t rain much, so that may make a difference.
In small pens and wet, that would be a mess, I expect.
Horses in training kept in stalls and pens are cleaned after several times a day, but even there, you can train most horses to one spot easily.
I was wondering, one difference with horses wasting feed could be what is being fed.
Do those horses that waste feed, use their feed for bathroom, are being fed grasses or alfalfa?
We only feed straight alfalfa and horses are too busy eating to want to do any other and regularly clean it all well before next feeding.
There is no hay left over to waste.
Oh, Blush will waste alfalfa. Happily. Less than with grass hay, but still. Even with a net. The others were happy to clean up the chafe that dropped, but Blush always had a pile. I would scoop it up and give it to Seven as “grain.” And we’re talkin really stunningly beautiful crack hay, too.
Had TB laid up for a month of stall rest. She loved to walk her stall, pulverizing everything underfoot. To not waste hay, I remembered how they do it at race tracks. I hung a regular hay net filled with hay outside her stall right by her door (dutch doors). She could eat to her hearts content with no danger to her eyes or feet. Made a little mess in the aisle right at the hay net but I quickly could scoop it up and put it (still fresh) in the hay net when next I refilled it, so no wasted hay.
Science is not as easy as a facebook post. You are doing your horse no harm at all by hanging a hay net up.
How do you hang a net with an entire bale in it? I would love to do this! Photo? TIA!
I do a full bale in the same shires net. For me the key is to hang the net horizontallly, not vertically. Yes, there is a high ring for the top part of the net - about chest high - but the ‘bottom’ of the net is actually hung across and clipped.
When the net ks empty, it drops across as chest height as it is attached at two points. I like to use clips to zip ties - bought at 50 lb weight so a horse getting caught would break the zip tie and drop the net to the ground.
With a clip at the top. Same as I would hang a net with just a few flakes? Nothing magical about it.
In the pasture we just chuck the flakes into a round bale feeder (horse style). No waste, no way to walk through it when horse A pushes horse B off a given pile.
I have corner feeders in the stall, at floor level. so it’s a triangular space and the stall-facing side is about knee height to a horse. No one’s tried to climb in it. I have ‘air holes’ in the stall facing side to help it keep the air sorta fresh.
I put my hay in a slow feed hay net which fits a full bale and the whole shebang sits in a stock tank intended for water. My mare is also shod and can’t have them on the ground, but sitting in the tank works well. I do secure the net into the tank (carabiners) so it doesn’t accidentally fly out when its getting empty.
