For those who run a boarding facility or a private barn that has boarders, etc.: a horse poops in her water bucket. Do you leave it hanging there all day and tell the owner to clean it when they come that evening, while saying “your horse is a pig,” or do you dump it out? The horses are cared for by the owner of the barn.
This happened to me and, while I do not mind cleaning out the bucket, I do mind that the manure was left in soaking in the water bucket all day. It happened once.
A bit over 25 years ago, DH got a gelding who pretty much pooped in his water daily. We were still boarding, the best place we ever boarded hands down, but the last place we were at before getting our own farm. There was some good-natured and understandable grumbling from the BO about it, but his water was changed by the BOs or the occasional fill-in workers they had, no issue or question. I never had reason to think they didn’t change it as soon as they found it.
Does that address your question? I would have hated it if he had poopy water all day. I would have been fine with an extra charge for the extra work, looking back. I suppose I just thought it was in the normal range of variability, the way some horses poop all over and some just in one neat spot, or some scatter hay all over their stalls whereas some eat every wisp.
With you saying it is a onetime thing, yes, I would mind my horse having nasty water all day. It’s not like horses can reason that they just messed up their water. I hope it wasn’t dangerously hot for your horse. However, only if it were a potential crisis issue, like extreme heat, would I take issue with it, unless it keeps happening, IF you are otherwise very happy with the place.
Geez, I just re-read your post and see you were asking BOs. Oops! I will be interested in hearing from others. Sorry!
She was turned out during the daytime. So the bucket sat in the stall until I got there in the evening.
wow, you find another barn after you hang a second water bucket just in case.
I can think of many reasons why the bucket may not have been emptied/cleaned while the horse was turned out. Obviously we’d all like to think our horse is #1 on the list for everything, but maybe there were other things going on at that moment and the BO forgot about it or was tied up with any number of other priorities.
But don’t really understand telling you that “your horse is a pig.” It’s a horse. I’m sure there wasn’t any specific thought process about deliberately pooping in the water bucket or making a statement.
Or, do you think the BO left it for you to see? It’s not really all that uncommon…not worthy of telling the horse owner as if it was an interesting event.
we had more of an issue with the horse using their water buckets to rub on so we switched those horse’s standard hanging water buckets to a flexible tub that is placed on the floor in the corner of the stall.
Never had one poop into the corner waterer
But back to OP’s problem, like mentioned above I would at least begin to look at another barn as providing a horse with water is a basic requirement for care and custody that the boarding barn has been entrusted to care for.
Why not offer the barn owner extra payment for dumping, cleaning, and refilling when they notice this problem?
No one wants to clean out manure soup. It sucks.
I know a horse that they have tried everything (bucket higher, bucket lower, different wall) and this horse manures in his bucket at least once per week.
How many horses does BO care for? Does BO turn them out and go to work at a regular job? Is anybody at the barn all day? Have family responsibilities? Did BO tell you your horse was a pig or are you assuming that is what they will say?
Just need a bit more info here about the normal barn routine. Possible she pooped in it, they did not check it then but would have when horse returned it her stall? Possible something came up disrupting the usual routine?
Even at well staffed barns, if the bucket is not easily seen from the aisle, poop in the water bucket, especially in an empty stall, might get missed for a bit. I would consider this a strike one situation pending more details.
It is also possible BO is overwhelmed and not really able to run the barn by themselves and you may need to change barns. Boarding is always a compromise between must haves and need to haves governed by how much you can afford to pay.
There are horses who, for some reason, do this on a regular basis. If yours starts to do this more than just the one time, the answer (if the barn has half doors on the stalls that face into the interior of the barn or aisle), is to hang the water bucket to the side of the half door of the stall. This makes it easy to fill for staff, and removes it from being available to poop in. The horse just reaches around the side of the stall door to access the water bucket. Can you tell I’ve had a horse who has done this as a regular thing?
Me too…but, if I understand OP correctly, there is no “staff”, just BO who may or may not live on the property or be in the barn all say.
Telling you your horse is a pig for pooping in the water bucket once is absurd. I feel like there must have been many other issues before this. Or this BO is just a stereotypical crazy BO.
I could understand if the BO had other tasks to do and did not have time to dump and refill the water bucket by the time OP arrived at the barn. But if they left it out of spite, as OP seems to feel, that’s also absurd. What if the OP wasn’t going to the barn that day? Would they have left the bucket and the horse would have been inside all night without water?
This person seems to have no business running a boarding barn. Horses poop in water buckets sometimes. It’s part of life. Some of them even poop in full 100-gallon water troughs outside. That’s not fun either, but it’s still just part of having horses.
If the horse was turned out and had access to hay/grass and water while out, then it is a non-event…aka no big deal…not worthy of complaining assuming the stall and water buckets are appropriately cleaned for when the horse comes in.
I don’t run a boarding barn, but I have had a bucket pooper. Barns have routines. Perhaps the horses are turned out and the stalls are done later…either later in the morning or later before the horses come in. I don’t recall what the barn did, but if this were to happen now, I would expect that the bucket would be cleaned whenever the stall is done.
And yes…manure happens…sometimes in water buckets. Oh, and I used to call my favorite stallion “a pig”…as in the rooting in the mud type pig. If there was a deep muddy puddle after a heavy rain, this horse would get coated in mud up to and including the eyelashes. It took a cement chipper to get it off him.
We hung a rubber covered stall chain across the diagonal corner in the stall of a horse who matured his water bucket almost every day. He can reach across to drink but can’t get close enough to get it dirty. Two screw eyes in the wall…problem solved.
I had a mare that did this. A LOT. I did hang 3 buckets in her stall but sometimes she would drain 2. I would take it out, dump it, clean it out and cuss. “Pigpen! How can you do this? Again?” She also would catch her tail in the bucket and pull out hairs.
I figured out the cause. The gnats and mosquitoes were biting her back end and dock area and making her intensely itchy. She would rub her tail on the bucket and then poop when she was rubbing. I know you can’t do this - but I put in a fly system. And left her fan on during the bad gnat system. She could go in and out but would stand under the fly system and get sprayed multiple times a day. Kept the bugs off her. She wasn’t itchy anymore so she quit bucket pooping. Has not happened in YEARS!!! (Knock on wood,)
As PO’d as I was there was no way I was going limit her water access by not having clean water available. I think I even bought an extra bucket so if I came down before work to feed - I could take out the nasty bucket and clean it later and hang a replacement bucket. You could do this and tell them to set the nasty bucket aside and you will clean it later.
From the information provided, I am a little unclear. Were you contacted and asked to come out specifically to clean the water bucket because the barn owner was indicating that they would not otherwise? If that was the case, I would absolutely take issue with that.
If I am paying for, basic care that includes ensuring my horse has access to clean water. My horses access to clean water should not be dependent on my ability to come out on a specific evening and clean a water bucket.
If however, it was more of a eye roll gosh horses are gross lol kind of moment, but they would’ve cleaned it no matter what and you came out before or offered to do so, I don’t think that is weird at all.
If stalls are done in the evening, along with water buckets, I would not necessarily expect someone to break that routine to dump a water bucket early. Personally, I would because it would just gross me out, but realistically the germs and funk are there whether the book bucket soaks for 20 minutes or 12 hours. I would definitely expect it to be cleaned before being refilled.
If a horse was a chronic bucket pooper then I think that is where a barn, owner and horse owner collaborate around creative bucket, hanging, or other ways to try to mitigate the problem.
As a barn owner myself (my horses, but I have had boarders in the past) - no way do I think that the horse owner should pay extra for poop in a bucket. They are horses. There is any number of ways they can be messy and gross - the BO has to set a rate and assume some of those things will happen. (Poop/pee in the aisle, poop in a bucket or feed pan, urine in a feed pan, whatever…) Not to mention all the things that happen that aren’t horse related – dead animal in a stock tank, bird nests in the rafters, etc).
If I had a chronic bucket pooper, that would be different - but would think of a solution rather than extra compensation.
I scrub it as soon as I find it. When we turn out we empty all buckets at that time then refill before horses are brought back in.
We do lots of things as a horse owner to make things work out.
If the OP really likes this place, and manure soup is something the barn owner really does not want to deal with, offer to pay for it.
Paying a little extra is better than having to find a new barn.
That was my thought.
When I was a barn worker, we had one that pooped in his bucket occasionally. We just dumped it and cleaned it. It was no big deal and part of the job. Nobody really gave it second thought, it was just a part of the care the boarder paid for.
It is a small private barn. Just 4 horses (2 of hers and 2 boarders) and the owner lives on the premises. I went there every evening.
Yes, she actually did call my horse a pig and said she left the bucket for me to clean. Not sure why she couldn’t take the time to dump it out when she was cleaning the stall.
In any case, there were other deficiencies and I did decide to move out to a friend’s place.
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