Maintenance Free (LOL) Farm

[Christa_P]

I don’t have Dutch doors, but I do have a side barn door that goes right out. It makes life so easy - open doors and send horses out, close the gate or door depending on the season. Reverse to bring in.

For outside water I am spoiled by having an artesian well. It was overflowing the well casing so we added a fitting a few inches from the top and hooked up a 3/4" water line and ran that to a trough in the sacrifice area. I also had to add a nearby culvert to a natural drainage area for the trough overflow into. Based on how fast the trough fills when scrub it I estimate around 900 gallons a day goes through the trough and as long as the line doesn’t freeze (I reworked it this year after problems the last 2 winters) my trough doesn’t freeze due to the constant flow.

This year I put in a hay floor using rough cut 2x4s, 1x8s and 1x10s to replace the pallets I had been using in my storage area. It made stacking so much easier and it’s much safer to walk on.

[QHEventer]

@Postandrails

If you’re keeping horses in a small herd situation, I like the setup of central shared dry lot with water, hay, shade and shelter, and with gates leading to each pasture. This is then “home base”, and you can leave one gate open and let horses come and go, or close the gate to contain them in the dry lot. To rotate pastures, all you have to do is close one gate and open the next one. It saves having to set up water, shade, shelter etc. in each pasture, avoids having to turn horses in and out and means one central area to keep clean + standard cleanup after rotating pastures.

If this is at all possible (horses can be kept in herd and have similar pasture/hay needs etc.) I think it is the simplest way to do it.

Exactly this! If I want, chores can take me 10 minutes a day. I often spend way more time than that putzing around the barn, but it’s nice knowing the essentials only take 10 minutes max. My low-maintenance set up includes a “home base” like above. It’s a mud-free dry lot with a trough that only needs filling 1-2X/weekly, and a slow feeder that holds 4-5 days worth of hay at a time. Gates open to the pastures, and it’s directly off the barn aisle, so bringing in for meals takes no time at all.

I don’t have a run-in, so if weather is truly awful, they’ll spend the night in their stalls which is SO much more work and reminds me why I try to keep them out 24/7!

[B-burg_Dressage]

Centralized barn with large overhang with wind blocks and oversized stalls that open to dry lot. I’ve found my 15x15 stalls stay a lot cleaner than smaller ones. Horses are not allowed free access to stalls since they have overhang. I use maybe 10 bags of shavings per year right now with my horses out about 360 days/year.

Very near horse barn is hay/equipment storage with easy access gate to dry lot.

Dry lot has good slope/drainage and footing (2" rock base + fabric + screenings). Dry lot also has large water tank (I only water/clean once a week).

Dry lot opens to 3-4 pastures that each have about 1 acre per horse depending on your area of the country. Easy rotational grazing and horses always have access to barn/water/etc. (also means less trenching for water/electric). Horses out in pasture mean you don’t have much poop to pick or deal with in the lot. All pastures have at least two gates, one being 14’ for equipment.

Metal fence posts set in concrete (big, wide ones–not t-posts). Something like flex fencing or the coated high tensile. All fencing electric to prevent leaning. High tensile is soooo low maintenance.

I don’t have all of these things, but I can say that 24/7 turnout and large water tanks would solve the daily chore struggle. I spend maybe 15 minutes each end of day doing chores. We mow our pastures about 3-4 times/year with rotational grazing. I only have to drag my arena every couple weeks because it’s just me riding and if it’s nice I ride in the hay field. Our fencing is basically zero maintenance until the posts rot in hopefully about 15-20 years. Our hay/equipment barn is less than a year old, so no maintenance on that for a long time either. Basically–just make sure everything is brand new and move every 10-15 years.

Also, hiring people to help stack hay once a year is money very well spent. DH and I did it ourselves the first year–never again with just the two of us.

[candyappy]

We just installed 2 of these waterers for our beef cows. They can be used on either gravity flow ( pond or spring fed) but we tied into our existing water lines since we tried a pond first but it wouldn’t hold water.

They are electric free and rated in -0 temps. I am planning on ( maybe) putting one in for the horses next fall. The only thing I worry about is my youngster playing with the attached ball float and flooding the place . He will be a year older and hopefully not so inquisitive??

He has gotten a lot better in the last year…

It is a Cobett waterer and this large one cost us $950 including the black matting to go around it which is under the gravel pad for cows. You wouldn’t need that for horses.

They go down 4 feet in the ground ( i believe) and you can take the inside part out for cleaning if needed. My husband and sons installed them easily. It sure makes things easier.

[Simkie]

@2DogsFarm

I do pick the area, not 100%, but damn close & especially make sure to keep the area shown poopless.
What else can I do?

I’d put mats over that area in a second. Those stalls are bedded? Horses are constantly dragging out small particles of bedding, which quickly rots & tada! You get a sucking mud pit. Mats are cheap and will give them a place to drop those bedding bits without working it into your rock.

I agree with everyone else about dutch doors opening to runs which open to your dry lot which opens to pasture. It’s SUCH an easy way to keep horses!

If money were no object, that stainless steel powder coated fence looks pretty awesome. It’s a gazillion dollars but seems like it needs nothing once installed!

Enough space to STORE everything is also key. Having to move stuff out of the way so you can get to that one piece you need is a terrible time suck.

Being able to store hay at ground level, with easy tractor access, can also save time. Hay can be delivered with a skid steer (feeding large bales also can save $$.) Stacking in the loft takes time and dollars.

Auto waters are great, but if those can’t be used somewhere, a spigot at the tank means no dragging hoses around or draining them in the winter.

[4horses]

I’d like more stalls,and more hay storage. Also a tractor. And more land.

I’ve filled one stall full of hay stacked up to the ceiling. That tractor would have been really really nice! An air conditioned tack room would be wonderful too. For that matter, I would love an air conditioned barn… Not sure how you would handle dust removal and ventilation. But every summer I dream about that. I have a bunch of fans but when it’s 100 degrees out it just doesn’t help.

[carman_liz]

I totally get the gutter and money situation. What about the rebarred down landscape timbers for now, if you cannot get geocells, get heavy duty landscape fabric on sale right now, and put like 3 or 4 layers of it down n have it staked down with the landscape timbers. Then fill that rectangle with a load of manufactured sand, even the larger stone “dust” would make a huge difference and you would be out under 1k. If you can put the landscape timbers and fabric on say a Lowes card, consider it your xmas present to yourself. Also, if you know anyone with a pickup truck or dump truck even less money since the biggest cost of buying stone is the haul fee.

[LCDR]

We don’t know how much gutter installation will cost over the OPs barn area. It might not be as expensive as some of the corrective measures on the ground. I had barn gutters installed, a total of 100 feet, 4 downspouts at the corners, all 4 running into underground drains opening to daylight 50 feet away from the barn, for $1,250. That was in 6 year ago money.

[Feliz]

Not directly farm related - but a low maintenance house & garden makes a huge difference. We’ve gradually removed all the excess, completely unsuitable trees & plants the old owners had planted around the house. There’s now enough garden to look nice, but not so much that it takes hours every week to maintain. The house itself is brick & tile so very low maintenance. The lawn is fairly small and we pay someone to do it - still cheaper than buying a mower and our own time.

There’s still a never ending list of jobs but it feels so much more manageable than when we moved in 2yrs ago

[Janet]

@SharonA1

I think your best answer to getting rid of the mud in that area is to add a big fat overhang, but… $$$$

Or gutters.

[2DogsFarm]

@Simkie @carman_liz & @LCDR
Thanks
Promise I will research your suggestions.
Faux Grandson has his own landscaping business & has gotten me loads of gravel free in the past, from customers changing out materials.
I’ll run the ideas past him & maybe some of the materials can be salvaged
Probably a project for Spring, but worth the wait.

[foggybok]

@2DogsFarm

Sigh… Yup, overhang (which I missed in the initial Build Euphoria ) would fix it.
But until I win the lottery…

Believe it or not, horses mostly poop away from the muckplace.
I think it is the bedding they drag out - in spite of 4" sills added to doorways - that makes the mess worse.

The rest of the paddock remains Pretty Shoe walkable for the most part.
In front of the barn & side not by stalls is rockhard & drains well.

PSA:
*Check & Recheck plans before approving
*Then check again

Bingo, we have a winner. It’s amazing how fast the bedding can wreck an area. I have dutch doors out into my paddock, but I actually don’t give them access to the stalls all the time (they have shelters). I’m pretty sure they would tear it up and build a mud pit there if I did. Even as is, I have to make sure they don’t drag bedding out as even a little messes things up.

When I was in Western WA I did as Simkie suggested and put down mats. It helped a lot! I put down the geotextile, crushed rock and then mats over and it worked wonders. One problem is the mats can get slippery.

Another thing we did in WA was install drain pipes in it. The barn opened to an area with poor drainage that tended to accumulate water. We just dug some trenches and ran drains out to the hill. That was a huge improvement Not sure how your drainage around the barn runs, but anything you can do to get water away from the area…

[susanne]

Feliz,
The very thought of denuding or minimizing my garden is almost as bad as the idea of getting rid of my horses! Less work, for sure, but at a cost I’m not willing to pay. I live my live believing that I CAN have my cake and eat it, too.

[OTTBs]

@ClassyJumper

Maybe not in a cold climate but I got larger troughs so I only have to deal with them once a week.

I think big troughs are better in a cold climate, less algae growing! I have 100 gal troughs, and found out that the trough heaters that Farm and Fleet carry are really made for even bigger troughs. I’ve always figured I should keep the water level deep enough that the heating element (vs the cage) is submerged, so I feel like I’m filling it more often in the cold weather since I won’t let it go dry. I wish I had a 150-200 gallon trough for the winter, I dread draining the hose since a time or two water still remained and froze.

[Feliz]

Please enjoy your garden, I’m sure it’s lovely and if it’s something you enjoy why would you change that?

Our place had seriously unsuitable planting though, like weeping cherries and olives planted on either side of the short driveway - less than 1m between the concrete drive and the fence - so absolutely nowhere for these trees to grow. Plus various other poorly planned things - most of the plants we’ve sold/given away through the local facebook group so at least they got repurposed.

[Libby2563]

Right now most of my maintenance woes involve wood. It warps and rots and grows moss and needs to be stained and painted, and everybody wants to eat it. My horses aren’t really wood chewers but even the occasional nibble leaves its mark. Mice will chew through it to make their highways. And I’ve had major carpenter bee problems, which a woodpecker kindly solved for me one day this year by pecking straight through the eaves of my barn and eating all the larvae. No joke, it looks like someone peppered the front and back of my barn with a machine gun. My next farm will have as little wood as possible!

[OnAMission]

Gutters with a metal roof in snow country can be an issue. There are things that can be done to promote success depending on how much snow you get but in general here the snow rips the gutters off, as it did to my house. We have days of melt/freeze so the snow wraps around the edge of the roof, onto and in the gutters, freezes that way and then the next day the whole show comes down.

[LCDR]

I suffered carpenter bees for over a decade, trying all types of pest control. Then magically one day a huge woodpecker arrived and spent several days connecting the holes and consuming the larvae. I had all the pecked wood trim replaced with synthetic planks and have been bee-free.

When I built my new barn, I made maximum use of synthetic wood replacements.

[Libby2563]

Yes! I found these PVC trim boards designed to look like wood that I’m going to replace the damaged eaves with: https://www.lowes.com/pd/Royal-Building-Products-Actual-0-75-in-x-3-5-in-x-12-ft-Common-Board-PVC-Board/50092312. They probably look a little tacky up close but thankfully this is well above eye level.

[Texarkana]

I know there is another thread on these, but anyone tried these?

Mud control grids

I ask because they seem pretty maintenance free in the sense you supposedly just plop them down where you need them. No digging down and backfilling to install, no need to refill lost screenings, etc. Also seems a little too good to be true. I imagine if your area isn’t level they wouldn’t work without site prep.