Help-sand tracking into stalls

[DoubleDown]

I just finished building my barn a few weeks ago, and brought the horses home. I have sand in my runs, and the first 12’ outside of the stall is under cover. Runs are 24x60’. Stalls are matted, and I have a 4" board across the doorway to keep the bedding in the stall.

The problem I’m having, is that my mare tracks too much freaking sand into her stall, it’s changed colors. My gelding hardly brings any in with him, his bedding is still light colored ( I use pellets). So why the difference? Should I be worried? She does all her bathroom business outside, I just hay (in nets) and grain in the stalls. Do I just leave it as it is, and not worry about putting pellets back in, just keep with the sand? It’s so weird, I can’t figure it out, other than her giant feed hold more wet sand?

[IPEsq]

I wouldn’t worry about it, but what if you put some mats outside of her stall under part of that covered area? Might knock the sand out the last few steps before she goes inside?

[Simkie]

Yeah, I wouldn’t worry about it either. IPEsq’s suggestion of a few mats outside is a good one, and that’s how I have my stalls set up–it works pretty well.

I’d not bed her stall in sand, though. If she really doesn’t pee inside and you have mats, perhaps you don’t need bedding at all. Just sweep the sand out every day and leave that stall as bare mats. If she’s just using her stall to eat that would probably work just fine!

[DoubleDown]

@Simkie

I’d not bed her stall in sand, though. If she really doesn’t pee inside and you have mats, perhaps you don’t need bedding at all. Just sweep the sand out every day and leave that stall as bare mats. If she’s just using her stall to eat that would probably work just fine!

I guess the problem is that I started off with pellets, and since she’s tracked it in, it’s this of a mix that I’ll never be able to separate. With the sand winning the mix game now. Do I just let the sand take over, and scoop it out if it gets too deep or whatever? Its just weird to me that the gelding doesn’t do it, but she does.

And- its annoying how it looks, all mixed colors, not pretty and fluffy! I know that’s trivial and kinda dumb! :o

[allons-y]

I sure wish my horses would bring some sand into the barn, lol, save my back!
Instead they take the shavings out.

[horsepoor]

We have a similar setup with stalls that open to a matted overhang which is open to pea gravel paddocks. One of mine would bring an incredible amount of pea gravel in to the stall – to the point that there would be more gravel than pelleted bedding and it drove me crazy. What we did was, for one, to lock him out during the day – no stall in and out privilege, just the overhang, which gave him shelter and is where we usually feed anyway. With half the time to track stuff in and out, that helped! We also put a kick board on his stall entrance, which helped some as well. So a board, I think a 2x6? laid flat to create a threshold and they usually hit this a bit and knock some of the stuff on their feet off. For us, we were trying to keep bedding from getting tracked out onto the rock as well, as that just creates muck eventually.