That’s why I carry a folding pocket knife – stays in my pocket but safely.
I tied a piece of POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS tape on the handle of my scissors and let me tell you they are pretty hard to misplace now.
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Mat mover grips. I don’t use them often, but they sure make dragging mats easier than using your bare hands.
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You can also put the heavy stall mat on a tarp and then drag that. Or try this, it starts at 1:30
Using Science To Move Heavy Rubber Horse Mats The Easy Way! - YouTube
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A husband, who is out feeding the horses in the rain while I sit on the couch and play on COTH.
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Oh my, there are 2 people in that video. Fold it in half and pick it up by the fold and the job would be done in 1/4 of the time and with less noise!
Fwiw, if you’re strong enough and tall enough, folding in half and picking up with one hand either end of the folded part works too.
If you have a couple of pairs of vice grips, those can substitute for single purpose mat picker upper thingies.
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This is what we use at my house. Vice grips.
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My mind is effing blown. I must try this tonight, even though I don’t really have to open another bale.
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those look really neat! Any idea what they are called?
What do you mean by stable cleaner? A hired hand, or is this some product I am unaware of?
She answered this earlier in the thread. Here is a copy of her post.
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Sounds pretty cool, but do you have a pic or drawing for those of us that lack imagination?
Along with the scissors, I keep serrated kitchen knives tucked a few places by gates and such. Aside for cutting hay twine, they can be a life saver if you need to cut a rope under tension. Years ago I had a freak accident where a young horse managed to almost strangle himself with a rope. All his weight was on it, and I think he may have died if I hadn’t been able to saw through it quickly with a knife.
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My High Country hay boxes, Drinking Posts, and my little Newer Spreader that I use with my lawnmower, are my three favorites. I also really love my solar lighting setup!
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Ah, I have just the thing for you! I think it’s called something like a scuffle hoe. I have one for the garden, and it works on both the push and pull stroke to cut off weeds and loosen the top bit of hard ground. I am sure it would work well. I find them easier to use than the manual tiller things, because you don’t have to push down hard.
Re: the barn cleaner. There is a place near me that used to be (the late, lamented) Whippoorwill Morgans. I believe it was originally a dairy barn but it was different from most of the old stanchion barns in that was fairly square. There was a gutter with the cleaner/conveyor running inside the walls by about 10 -12 feet (I imagine there used to be stanchions around the perimeter). As I recall, she built stalls around the outside and covered the gutter with wood with trap doors at the stall doors. There was a drop off behind the barn to park the manure spreader. So all a person had to do was clean into the gutter and then push the button and the manure was dumped into the spreader!
She also had some ideas that were ahead of her time. The stall fronts were chain link for ventilation. She used the center of the barn to do a soft weaning where the babies would play in the center while the moms were in the stalls where they could be seen and touched for increasing periods of time until eventually separating altogether.
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I totally agree! These things are a lifesaver if you have mats!
@AnnaB264 I edited the original post with a link to the ‘kissing gate’ that swings between two posts and so cannot be left open.
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I should have gotten a set of those mat movers for last week’s “mat the run-in” project, but I struggled through without!
My favorite trick/tip I learned here on COTH a couple of years ago: always put a thin layer of waste hay on the bottom of the wheelbarrow before you start mucking any manure or dirty/wet bedding into it so that in the winter, the manure doesn’t freeze to the bottom of the 'barrow, and in the summer, the 'barrow stays cleaner. Since I only have one pony and I don’t usually have to dump the wheelbarrow every day, this one little thing has saved me a lot of frustration!
I also love my 2 way gate latches - I have them all over the place, including on the 4’ gates that I use as stall doors - my stall doors can’t swing flush against the wall, but I can swing them in or out, depending on whats more convenient at the moment https://www.amazon.com/SPECIAL-SPEECO-PRODUCTS-S16100100-Latch/dp/B01707X31I/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=2+way+gate+latch&qid=1610982271&sr=8-3
