TBH-- from the response of not only the BM but the riders themselves, I don’t see them as the kind of people who do anything for anyone else. No matter how good a neighbor you may be.
Good neighbors help even the ones who don’t respond in kind when help is truly needed.
Why? Because it is the right thing to do-- not something you do because they may one day do something for you.
They won’t even pick up their horse’s steamy piles of crap and you think they are going to volunteer to grade OP’s driveway, plow their land, yank tree stumps and haul wood?? LOL.
Hey @Newtohorseppl I was musing about “your” horses while cleaning stalls (which seems appropriate 
) and had a thought…
When you watch the horses ride by, do they stop, put their head up with their ears very forward, look at something in particular? Before dropping a big load of 
?
Horses are prey animals (hunted by others for food) and they have a very solid flight or fight response. They’re always looking around, wondering … is that a tree stump or a bear? A hose or a snake? A puddle or a bottomless pit? When they’re worried, they lighten the load and drop a pile in preparation, in case they decide hey, that IS a bear and we need to GTFO of here.
And as a rider, if I’m on a horse that’s having a moment, I’m going to let them stand and process and decide that, no, hello, it really is a tree stump, because if I send my horse forward, they may think I’m saying it’s a bear, and our ride might get a lot more interesting very quickly.
If you’re seeing this–horses stopping, head up, ears very forward, looking hard at something, then taking a big poop–you might be able to stop them from doing that if you can (and are willing to) move or remove whatever it is that they’re fixating on.
Horses are also creatures of habit, so if they’re stopping and looking at something new, eventually it will not be new anymore, and they’ll not consider it a threat, so the stop and look and poop might resolve over time, especially if whatever they’re seeing doesn’t change.
The ones getting angry are the minority in the horse world. Most of us are considerate people who clean up after our horses and who appreciate good property owners surrounding our riding areas. Please don’t judge the horse world by the unreasonable minority. Hang in there and good luck.
I think we understood that point a few posts ago.
Not necessarily. There could be easements in play.
I hope the OP has found some amusement in this thread! It has certainly had its moments of weird.
My take is that the boarding barn up the road is a business, and probably (like most horse enterprises these days) one that is always a bit on the marginal side of being profitable.
That barn manager’s rude entitlement tells me the business is under some stress (she would be a low-paid hire, with such little experience as she has shown), and not likely to endear itself to the wider world, as long as that person is its face to the neighborhood and clients. I’m guessing we’ve all seen young barn managers with attitude: they come, and then they quickly go.
OP, if you are still visiting this thread: rather than littering your property with signs and such, I’d write a note to the property owner. You can find them on county tax records, usually. Just a friendly:
“Hello, hope we meet in person some day, but now, I am requesting that your equestrian clients not leave manure on my (new gravel) driveway. Thanks ! Your neighbor”
If the barn owner is a sane human being, this will get a proper response, because their stake in maintaining good neighborhood relations is about 100x that of any individual who is not in the horse business.
“I wish to register a complaint! This costume wasn’t here last time I came in, pain an suffering I tell you.
@KBC to help you out, here is really what I wrote in regards to the suggestion of a deterrent to those riders with their horses who use the road on their ride, NOT a Halloween decoration but a year round blow up.
I guess I don’t find humor in a possible serious accident that could occur because of a homeowner decided to do something ON PURPOSE to deter horses from passing their property and if an accident were to happen then a HUMAN could just look into legal recourse because of it.
I am glad that OP actually seems to be a very nice, calm and concerned human, looking for reasonable advice in regards to their situation and it seems that they have taken the good advice and moved on.
i like this way of solving the muck bucket issue
right? you have to clean up dog crap on an easement too. Or at least you’re supposed to.
I read the whole thread. And have lived this experience in multiple states in multiple neighborhoods. The last time it happened to me personally, it was in an equestrian neighborhood with bridle trails. Karen yelled at me for horse poop as her dog was nipping at my horses heels. She threatened to call the cops if my horse kicked her dog.
I’m done trying to be helpful with these types of people.
My decades of experience differs. In their pastures i can actually see the deeper richer color of green when grass is growing around a horse poop pile. Different than cow dung spot, which does not dark-green up the grass growing around it. Of course better still is llama and sheep…now THAT manure is pure gold!
I’ll see your 
(no llama emoji 
) & 
& raise you 
I scoop my coop daily & being lazy, toss poop out the door.
Grass in front of the coop grows twice as fast & lush as anywhere else.
Sigh. Elizabeth, CO is semi-arid, and the past couple years of drought has probably moved it more toward arid. Poop-piles left unattended in the pasture dry out, still in a pile, killing grass, and anything else underneath. I drag our pastures several times a year, mostly to break up the piles. Once spread out a bit, the manure balls eventually break down to something resembling dry grass clippings, but it never “composts”. Poop from stalls, paddocks, and our “dry lot” goes into a pile behind the barn. In the poop-pile, only the very bottom layer actually begins to look like compost; that after sitting undisturbed for ~6 months. If I turn the pile with my tractor, I don’t even see that. At around 6 months, we have accumulated a truck-load, and we have somebody come and haul it away.
I understand that there are ways to force it to compost in a dry climate, but I already have plenty of chores and expenses on my plate w/o adding the bother of building and maintaining a composting setup to the list. It might be a different story if we were avid gardeners, but we aren’t, and what little compost we use can be easily and inexpensively acquired at a Home Depot or whatever.
So let me amend my original assertion (altho I’ve already said as much):
Horse poop in my yard, if left to its own natural process, does not compost, and does not act as fertilizer to any noticeable extent. In fact, if left in piles as delivered, it tends to suffocate whatever lies beneath. Breaking the piles up, and spreading it around with a wire harrow (arena rake) seems to offer some small benefit as a mulch, but only if we get rain shortly following. Otherwise the harrow action just contributes to loss of topsoil as the wind blows the dry manure and disturbed dirt on down-range. For us, the best solution is to pick it up and haul it away. AFAIK, all of our neighbors do the same thing.
So, kind readers: YMMV as far as composting horse poop. But have at it if it amuses you, and if you get usable compost from your project, that’s even mo-betta.
You do realize there are accepted best practices for composting, and that single piles of manure are unlikely to meet the conditions required for composting to occur, yes?
Deltawave, who used to post her, had photos of her setup.
It was quite nice, relatively compact, and very efficient.
You might be able to find them.
If not, there is a tremendous amount of info out there from state extension offices, land grant colleges, and the like that can point you in the right direction.
Of course. They all require Work, above and beyond merely loading the muck cart and dumping it in a pile. Composting Horse poop in my climate requires attention and maintenance, and I’m just not that interested. The young man who hauls for us tells me it goes to a large facility that does compost it. He said it takes about two years dump-to-bag. There endeth my curiosity.
There’s a difference between saying horse manure makes lousy compost and saying you don’t want to be bothered composting it.
True, but it’s low on the compost-able list. I’m saying it is a poor return on time and effort. Maybe if I kept a whole lotta Equines, but we only have four.
However if you want some PooDoo, you’re welcome to it; come by with a truck and I’ll load you with my tractor, no charge :-D.
If you’re in no hurry to use your compost, the only work involved can be Load, Dump, Wait.
That’s all I’ve done for almost 20yrs.
@Ghazzu is right about @Deltawave - her bins were a Thing of Beauty.
Mine is just piles. 
My main pile has a base - yet to be accessed - that dates back to somewhere before 2009.
If anyone ever dug down that far it would be great stuff, the Black Gold gardeners covet.
I have a neighbor that takes away probably a 1/3 of the pile every year. Where he gets to the ground, it’s barren - heat & weight from the stuff on top has prevented anything growing.
I take mine from the top layer & when I get about Midway down, it’s ash.
So, if you want to wait, you can get the garden enhancing stuff.
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