I have a coming 4 year old that has gone from living outside to now being stalled during the day. She is a complete pig in her stall. It is impossible to even clean and has to be stripped each day. Are there any tricks to getting her to be neater?
I think no.
But, the type of bedding you use might make a difference. What kind, and how much are you using?
What does it mean that it’s impossible to clean - meaning manure tracked throughout all the bedding? Or hay also?
Since she is in during the day, can you see what she is doing? Is she pacing/weaving? Does she lie down to sleep?
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I wish!
Realistically, like @S1969 said, if the mare is doing something specific to make a mess maybe see ways to reduce whatever that is. More hay that takes longer to eat?
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My short answer would also be no.
If you want a cheaper alternative, I love (and so does my horse) straw. It’s cheap and super cushiony for their big bodies. I usually sprinkle a layer of sawdust first, to better absorb the urine.
Tip: use a metal pitchfork (like the real, old school kind). They’re so much easier to clean with than the plastic ones. I also like to put my horse’s hay in a big plastic tub in her stall to keep the straw separate. This may also help regardless if you choose to use straw or not.
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I second finding out why she’s so messy. She may need some time, or help, adjusting to being stalled if she’s used to living outdoors 24/7.
When I first introduce a young horse to the stall, it’s after having learned to tie to the wall for varying lengths of time. I’ll often bring in a young horse and tie them in the arena while I’m working an older horse, or leave them tied after being worked while I go get the next horse. By the time they get good at that, they are ready to go get tied in a stall instead of the arena, and I usually leave them with a full hay bag. They already know they are expected to stand quietly while tied and learn pretty quick that being in a stall means they get to hang out and relax with food. Then I can start leaving them untied in the stall for varying periods without issue.
I realize not everyone has the set-up for this, and it’s entirely possible your mare is just messy, but if her stall is getting trashed it’s usually because she’s stirring up her bedding, which means she’s likely doing a lot of moving and fussing, and a relaxed horse is not typically moving around a ton.
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I have two piggy horses and having a run available makes ALL the difference. Is there any option at all to move her to a stall with a run instead of just a box?
Yes, with the caveat that it took me 7, yes, SEVEN years of daily disaster zone to get it right. Hay must be at front of stall and either netted or in a bin. Feed tub in same corner. Water between door and hay. Bars between stalls instead of full walls. Turnout buddies in close proximity. Regular turnout hours.
After years of being greeted by a disaster zone every day, I now scoop out one giant poo area and maybe one or two “accidents”. All bets are off if weather screws up turnout though. If they are in all day there will be a poo pile from overnight and the rest of the stall will be trashed from being busy all day moving around trying to find something interesting to watch.
Your mileage may vary as my batshit princess may not be your batshit princess LoL
Her entire life she has always come in to eat twice a day or for inclement weather. So the stall isn’t totally brand new. She has plenty of hay. She isn’t pacing or upset. She just poops wherever she is standing then walks in it. I use fine shavings. I now use minimal though since I am pretty much stripping the stall each day. I will try a hay net to minimize that mess. My barn is concrete block so adding a run is a major project. She does not seem unhappy or nervous. Everyone else is on the same schedule.
Some horses are just piggy! Welcome to the piggy horse club.
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My princess tends to be messy when stall walls are solid and she has to peek out/go out to see what the others are doing. A slow-feed hay bag, long (12+) turnout hours, bars between stalls and an attached paddock have helped immensely. It seems pasturing with a gelding who is very particular about outdoor potty areas has also improved her hygiene. She now poops in one big pile on one side of the stall and leaves it pretty much undisturbed. But her newish gelding buddy went from being a neatnik to a total slob once he discovered napping and rolling in the mini shavings. So I’ve still got a labor-intensive stall to muck. A mini-horse pitch fork helps get most of the fragments without having to strip the stall…
I spent many years as a stall cleaner where I boarded my horses and I can tell you the messy ones are messy no matter what. She sounds like a horse in constant motion when in.
We had better luck with those when they were moved to a stall with attached paddock 12x24 . Is that an option? Your mare is young and would probably be happier if that is available or something you could do with a couple round pen panels??
You can try using MORE shavings. It may sound counterintuitive, but for SOME messy horses it improves the situation. Pee stays together better, the poo doesn’t get as smashed. Doesn’t always work, but sometimes. Or, for some messy/kinda-messy horses I’ll start them one day with a pretty good bed, then not add any/much bedding until it’s gross, thin, and ready to strip a few days later (typically 3-5 depending on bedding, horse, etc.). I know that doesn’t answer your question about making her less messy, but may help in the bedding department.
Some horses get better as they get more used to a stall, or with a change in location/neighbours, etc… but as others have said, most messy horses will always be messy to some degree.
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Sometimes moving where you put the hay helps. Moving one of our mares hay from the front of the stall to the back made her about 50% neater in her stall.
And yes I agree, more shavings is better than less with messy horses.
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I think more bedding is worth trying to see if it works for this particular horse, but I am going to say that this did not work for my messy mare.
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OP, are you around the barn during the day? Can you pick stalls more often so that the mess gets removed before it gets tracked throughout the stall?
What’s your door situation like?
Mine are significantly less messy if they have a half door to put their heads over. If you don’t mind the mess, you can even put a hay net outside or just inside the door. We had to replace a gate my pony broke recently, the new one is too tall to put his head over and he went from pooping neatly along one wall to a stirred up nasty mess. He spends a lot of time going back and forth between his two windows, it grinds the poop in and pushes it out to the edges.
I also highly recommend straw! I love chopped straw. You can pick it just like shavings but because straw locks together, poop doesn’t get churned up.
Also, she may get better with age. Horses are stressed by change even if they don’t show it outwardly, and those first few months can be hard on a horse not used to being stalled.
Some ideas!
First off - maybe a toy of some kind to keep the horse from pacing (if that’s part of the problem), and if you can some how find a way to set up the stall so that she doesn’t have to move much to do what she needs (water, hay, grain bucket close to each other!). Another thing that I’ve found to be helpful if you can’t add more shavings is (blanking on the name right now!!) the stall-dry absorbent sand-type stuff. It’s a grainy type thing that is good for those horses that pee a lot and you use it when you clean the stall.
My messy mare did best with super deep bedding and banked sides. The urine would end up having a small visible patch from the surface (truly 5-12" wide circle). When you tossed back the top layer it would reveal the patch of urine soaked bedding. The manure would end up being buried whole so some careful sifting would reveal everything intact. I also found that she would lay down more when her stall wasn’t a turned up mess of ick and she stayed a lot cleaner.
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I have one really neat mare so when I got a second mare that was messy I thought the neat one would rub off on the pig. NO - the neat one got messier. The pig is just a pig. If her stall door is open she comes in to poop and walks it all over. If her stall door is shut she poops all over and walks in it. I do bed her lightly since she will not sleep in her stall and this forces her to pee outside.
In the summer she refuses to go outside until it is dark so her stall is a shovel up and discard when it comes to bedding. In the winter she prefers the outdoors ( unless it is raining) so she is not so messy in her stall.
We have had a good deal of rain so I was taking the loader on the tractor and moving and shoveling up her poop at the gate to the pasture. So she walks out there, sniffs around, “Hey what happened to my poop?”. So she has started pooping there so she has a nice level of organic muck there at the gate. This replaces her need to poop in the stall so I am happy.
If you can train a confirmed pig please let me know!
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