We have 20 acres with three horses… there’s horse poop everywhere and it’s driving me crazy. SO said it’s not worth it to try to compost etc. I remember the stable I use to work at would pile it all up, and burn it? Anyways. Looking for suggestions.
Do I just leave it? I’d have to go around with a pick and wheelbarrow
I think people go through the pasture with a spreader and break it up so it acts as fertilizer. You might want to split your field up into 3 or 4 pastures so you can rotate and regrow.
IME horses won’t eat grass growing from fresh manure.
We drag a harrow over our pasture sometime every February and add additional fertilizer in March. It breaks up and spreads manure to feed the grass and eliminates the places where they may not graze because of manure build up.
Are the 20 cross-fenced? If not, do so.
Then get a drag and as part of your rotation program drag the pasture area after you remove the horses. You could pile up manure and burn it but all you’ll do is increase your costs of pasture maintenance as you will be removing fertility from the soil Anything you remove must be replaced or the quality and quantity of forage will diminish. Better you drag and let Sun dry it and rain spread it out. You don’t note where you are. For specific instructions contact your county agent and find out what program works best in your area.
Here’s DIY way of doing it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enXXoy-VMb4
G.
20 acres is a lot to wander around looking for poops. Many people pile poops up, cover with a tarp and leave for a year - yummy broken down soil for spreading, and helps kill worms. We kept ours sub-divided.
I use my small lawn tractor w/ mower and go thru and pulverize the manure right before it rains. Spreads the manure
real well and fertilizes the grass. A drag wouldn’t do anything to break up the hard manure but would just spread the balls around. And manure balls take a long time to break down.
We hired a guy once a year who tilled it into the soil in winter. The grass grew … the horses ate … we repeated the cycle. It was far away from our house and the neighbor’s houses. Now, we remove it daily and have it hauled out weekly. I’m in the high desert - no grass to grow.
Cross fence into at least 2-3 separate pastures and drag with a chain harrow and mow right after moving them off the pasture.
three horses and 20 acres and there is poop everywhere? … we have seven head on two acres and they poop in certain places only… mostly in the compost pile as we had one lead mare who would make the others obey, but she passed away several years ago and the herd has reverted to wild …but still I can not envision three horses being able to cover 20 acres with poop …that is about 900,000 square feet
Some horses like to use the same spot (OVER AND OVER AGAIN)! Whenever you rotate pastures, wait a couple days and then pick up, use a harrow and mow. This has worked well for us. Good luck!
If these folks have 20 acres and three horses there is NO rational reason to “pick up” manure. Instead, use a drag to spread it. Let the rain take care of the rest.
If they are in a dry climate then they can either pick it up or use the same drag and let the Sun do the work of drying the manure bits (that will happen in a couple days in a dry, sunny climate) and they will crumble into dust over time.
Dragging preserves the fertility of the soil. Removal does not.
G.
@Guilherme Our gelding (of course) has a habit of going right by the gate. That we pick up. We also compost, which will go into our new pen. When it’s too much of an aggravation, we drag or sometimes both. We’re only on 5 acres though, which is quite a bit different than 20.
It’s cross fenced, there’s a ridiculous amount of poop IMO. They go in the same spot.
We are in eastern Montana, it hasn’t started snowing yet. We summered the horses here w/o hay and just some grain for my hard keeper. There was cows on it before we moved the horses.
Sounds like spreading would be best. Still reading through reply’s.
My SO did tell me I’m in Montana now and not California
The pasture is also spilt up into 3 separate areas, we are working on either leasing or purchasing another 30 acres that has irrigation right next to the 20 acres.
OK, this I understand. 
We pick up a couple of small turnouts but most are drug and that is, IMO, the better practice.
If you pickup and then spread (with or without composting) then there’s no issue.
G.
What everyone else said. Get a drag. Rotate pastures. Graze, move horses, mow and drag, let it sit…repeat on next pasture.
No need to pick it up or compost it. How often you mow/drag/rotate depends on the grass more than anything else. 20 acres is a ton of grazing for only 3 horses. You shouldn’t have to work hard except to keep up with mowing.
This is what I do,set the mower on a low setting and now the poop, makes it into a fine dust .
In the wild, horses mark territory by pooping and peeing in the same places. It tells other horses " this is our range". Our stallion from the west, pastures of 5000 acres, would always poop in the same corners of his fields. There was a regular stack of manure here in each corner location of his much smaller pasture. He actually backed up to the pile to make sure it piled up higher each day! His gelding buddy also used those locations to poop, then stallion pooped on top of it. It was what they were used to doing as herd horses out west, using instinct, observation of other herd members for their guide.
I like horses using the same locations to poop, it leaves all the other areas for grazing. They don’t eat where they poop. I drag my fields to break up poop, spread the organic matter to enrich the soil and plants as part of field rotational grazing… A years worth of pasture mowing is supposed to equal an application of fertilizer, no extra cost to you! Cutting makes the grass grow back better by keeping the leaves short. Hauling manure out of paddocks, pastures, removes all those nutrients from soil use, so you will need more fertilizer to keep the grasses growing well, being nutritious for the animals. Like folks who just cut hay, never fertilize. They are hauling away the nutrition, in time the hay field is far less productive, worthless as feed because all the soil nutrients are gone.
I have never had manure balls stay hard, refusing to break up. Is it a local problem with weather cooking them? I do tie on some old tires to our chain harrow to keep the teeth firmly on the ground when dragging fields. Maybe some tire weight on your drag would be helpful in breaking up hard manure balls.
I have about 20 acres in three turn outs that I keep 2-4 horses on at any given time. I’ve gone back and forth about whether I should drag and always end up deciding not too. Horses manage their own areas by pooping in the same spots and keeping other areas free for grazing. They don’t eat over poop. This is a pretty smart system to manage internal parasites. Why do I want to drag the poop all over the field and while I’m at it speed those eggs all over the field when they have been nicely sequestered from the eating areas?
We rotate pretty frequently and we do fecal counts, so I know with a minimum of dosing that I’m keeping parasites to a minimum. I fertilize (nitrogen only according to soil tests) about once a year. I will confess that with and average of 45-50 inches of rain a year most of the poop lying around gets broken down reasonably quickly so I’m not having to look at it. IF I were to drag I would not do it in the winter, but instead would wait for the warmest days of summer. Parasites have a much shorter life span in the poop above 80 degrees than at cooler/colder temps.
And for the trivia buffs: the areas they regularly poop in are historically called the “rough” and because it is well fertilized but not eaten down the grass is taller. When they started/invented golf in the fields of Scotland it was important to keep your ball out of the rough and still is today!
I live in East TN. I don’t drag as aggressively as I might. I follow the same basic plan as subk re rotation.
Dragging does not spread parasites. It break up the homes where parasites breed. It allows Sun and rain to do the job returning the fertility housed in the manure back into the pasture. If we do that we also reduce the risk of infection. And in addition we break up the breeding homes of a number of different types of flies and that is Very Good Thing!
As much rain as we get there (so far in my rain gauge for 2018 says 67.87", making this the second wettest year ever, after 1875) the undragged clumps just melt a bit but seem otherwise intact, meaning breeding homes for things I don’t want.
It’s a worthwhile process that has many benefits.
G.
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