My last boarding barn in Michigan had a dumpster for manure that was emptied once a week.
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I use compost bins, but I have a pulse on dumpsters in the south Chicago suburbs - Hereās what I got for 10 or 15 yd roll offs.
April thru November
10 yd $390 per empty with a 9 ton limit, $70 per ton over 9 tons
15 yd $420 per empty with a 9 ton limit, $70 per ton over 9 tons
December thru March
10 yd $390 per empty with a 3 ton limit, $70 per ton over 3 tons
15 yd $420 per empty with a 3 ton limit, $70 per ton over 3 tons
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One stable where I boarded also had a dumpster. It was picked up on a regular basis.
One thing I noticed in the desert SW was the manure dried to a powder very quickly. That mitigated any odor.
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In the city of Los Angeles, a brown trash can is for manure/soiled shavings. The city has its own composting center, so itās put to good use.
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Oh wow! This is so neat.
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In the āolden days,ā manure was considered to be gold and city residents would scoop it up from streets for use in their gardens.
We haul our manure to a local forest products business. It gets composted with yard debris and sold as garden amendment.
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It sure does. I do wish it would do the same for the pesky flies!!!
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As someone whose family bred and raised horses in Southern California for eons, itās definitely a different world on whatās normal.
But that being said, the family packed up the remaining horses and went to Oregon when I was in college and horsekeeping on pasture wasnāt all sunshine and rainbows either. Ironically in California, they rarely had colic, never had a metabolic laminitis case, horses were just more fits since the expectation was to have them out daily. All of that changed in Oregon.
Iām in the Midwest now and people just about keel over when I tell them about how many people feed cubes or pellets rather than long stemmed forage!
But for some horses, I think they honestly do well in a busy environment not on grass. Fwiw-my family mostly had Arabians.
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Horses live absolutely forever in southern California! Itās amazing. I donāt know if itās the alfalfa or the weather or the fact they get so much work but lots of people I havenāt seen in 20 years still have and are riding the same horse. One of my friends is 48 and just lost her young riders horse two years ago and was riding him until a few months before he died. I hear a lot of similar stories
I do think the quality of farriers, vets, and riding is very high too which helps a lot for soundness.
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What list lol? Again, im not trying to say that horse ownership should be banned in some areas. I just think we should strive for better for our horses.
Even a run or pipe corral is an improvement from a box stall and no turnout.
Iāve seen plenty of gorgeous, healthy, well behaved horses that get no turnout. But it does make me feel sad to know that the horse has no enrichment in life outside of being ridden/handled by people. And food lol.
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Most horses thrive in dry climates. I agree with what you said about Oregon and have experienced plenty of hoof abscesses in the wet winters, laminitis in the spring, and mild colics with extreme weather or season changes. Horse keeping here is a constant management challenge.
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And here in the wet PNW-- we limit turnout in the wet months to āsacrifice paddocksā because turnout on grass pastures means mud, mud, mud and ruined grazing!! All that rain and temperature swings means our grass is a sugary nightmare, especially for metabolic horses. So again, limited turnout! My vet(s) all point out that 24/7 turnout here is dangerous in spring and fall, due to the risk of laminitis. Muzzles abound, along with limited turnout for those who care about horse health. Come summer and early fall, it is a fly filled horror show for those horses left to fend in pastures. My guys donāt react too badly, but are very grateful to come in after a few hours so they can stand under their overhang in the shadeā¦in their sacrifice paddock.
I have had a few boarder horses that simply hated all day turnout. Hated it! Paced, called, sweated, coliced. They loved to have paddock access but wanted to be back under their shelter, out of the sun and away from flies. Same situation at my trainerās barn: Everyone goes out, but a few just for a morning. They canāt tolerate lengthy turnout in the summer or the pouring rain for hours on end.
Soā¦horses, like people, can like or dislike their environments. Doing whatās best for horses can look very, very different. And as we lose open, farm land close to urban areas where most riders live, horsekeeping will look different around America. Surprisingly, horses are extremely adaptable and content in many settings. Be careful of anthropomorphizing!
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And this comes, in part, by having a relatively high concentration of horses in a given area to support it. One of the vets with an MRI (Mark Martinelli) told me that he came to SoCal bc there was a sufficiently high concentration of horses with owners that wanted and could pay for the sort of ātoysā that he wanted for his practice. He knew it was never going to happen at the time wherever he was previously.
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Good description of what we deal with in the PNW! My pastures are brown and dry right now. My mare wore a grazing muzzle until last week. I made a sacrifice paddock for her as I only turn out for a few hours on pasture during the rainy season. I donāt want the pasture torn up. She does just fine with that management plan.
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I think thatās where they evolved.
Dry also means fewer bugs. We think we have them, but not like other areas. A riding friend now lives in MN and says that between the snow/indoor riding in the winter and the bugs in the summer, her favorite times are dome of spring and fall.
Iāve also never had a fecal come back positive for worms or eggs on a horse born and raised here. Friends whoāve imported horses from other areas do get positives. I do remember scraping bot fly eggs off my horse and seeing worms in manure as a kid (again, Iām old) but not at all recently
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Absolutely. Even here in Wisconsin, we may have some very limited turnout in winter due to bitter cold or icy footing. One barn I was at, horses were barely out all of one January.
But yes. Midwest issues include so many laminitis issues, dry lots like no oneās business, and so forth. A lot of farms have planted grass more suitable for dairy which is far from ideal and my horses have the ability to be in or out of their stalls and much to my disappointment theyāve been hanging out most of July and August inside. I donāt want to be cleaning out stalls more than necessary ponies!
But I do appreciate they have a reprieve from the bugs and wet footing when they go inside.
But yes. Horsekeeping looks so different in different places. I can just report from a physical standpoint that Southern California avoided so many issues. While having more sun pens and more turnouts would definitely be ideal at LAEC, it doesnāt mean those horses are not meeting basic needs imo.
And the tunnels at Griffith Park are wild. My first horse who came from the Midwest and was well used to things like cows and turkeys wasnāt sure what to make of the giant horse eating tunnel at first.
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They did evolve from tiny forest creatures to the grazing animals we know today. Think about how many breeds evolved from horses in the Middle East and the European steppes. Imagine how hard it is to keep horses in wet, humid tropical locales. They adapt, but it has to be hard.
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I pulled up one website that said $13 for 11 cubic feet (once freed from the plastic wrap itās sold in). You can do better buying large quantities. Some of the stables that have been around forever are grandfathered into a bulk shavings company that Iāve been told is way less expensive. The quality is a bit more variable than the bagged shavingsāsometimes itās in larger chunks, sometimes part of it looks more like sawdust, occasionally there are curlicues. Usually access to that shavings pile is controlled by the barn.
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Aināt that the truth!
Last summer I had to stash my mare at the ranch next to my trainerās barn while I waited for a spot at her place. The breezeway barn had huge stalls with large runs. It was very nice. But the shavings? I was allowed to add bedding if I thought my horse wasnāt bedded enough. Yet the truck loads were often a mix of utter sawdust and wood chips that resembled giant toothpicks. Needless to say, I usually ended up buying bags from the feed store.
Iām not sure of the price of bagged shavings in SoCal these days. Here in northern AZ 10 cubic feet, compressed (so one standard bag) is $12-14.
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Yes. Jack Russell Terrors as a trainer I know calls them.
On 24/7 turnout: the reason Feronia is still around is that I moved her to a place that has it. She liked her stall, but her lungs and her joints did not. Itās not a huge space, 24 by 96, and itās a dry lot, but sheās really thriving there. Sheās in her own paddock because she prefers other horses to be nowhere near her hay or her holy butt - and if sheās going to kick, it comes out of nowhere.
I had her out 24/7 at another barn, in a slightly smaller space, and she was fine there spring-summer-fall, but got really nervous in the winter. But there, she was the first line of defense against coyotes and bears. Luckily I was able to get a stall for her in 2 of the 3 winters I was there. This barn had real all day turnout, so 8 to 10 hours, as compared to 6 at many places because of staffing issues - there was not a morning shift and an afternoon shift, so all feeding, stall cleaning, turnout and turn in, etc had to get done in 8 to 9 hours.
Lola? Really needs 24/7 turnout and a lot of friends. Bringing her back to the Boston area may be tough. Iāve been told I could get it further from Boston, but standards of care decline as one gets further away. Thatās her in the middle; sheās energetic and being out lets her run and play.
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