Over cleaning stalls?

[taylorelaine]

I feel like I might be doing too much when it comes to cleaning my horse’s stall. I know clean stalls are super important, and there’s no such thing as too clean a stall, but I just want to know if maybe I’m overdoing it a little.

This is from my one horse over the course of 12 hours. I find his stall a lot harder to clean than my other horse’s—she pees on one side and is pretty neat, rarely walking through it. My messier horse, on the other hand, pees in the middle and walks through it frequently, spreading it around.

I feel like I’m partially stripping his stall every time I clean it and end up adding a bag of shavings back almost every day. I want his stall to be as clean as I can make it, but am I overdoing it?

[Simkie]

This is really a “how long is a piece of string” kinda question. Everyone has their own yard stick on stalls. I don’t personally see anything wrong with your pics.

Some things that you could try: can he have a run off his stall? Even a small one might make a huge difference.

Playing around with where his hay and water are might help.

Bedding deeper might help him churn less. The pee may stay below his “walking” layer.

Adding pellets in his pee spot may help spare your shavings, since pellets are more absorbent.

Or going to pellets entirely could be an option, and might reduce wastage if they’re deep enough to not churn.

I also have a very piggy horse. She’s new to me, so we’re working through it. I bed her more deeply than my others, otherwise she just mixes the wet into the rest. She has a run. I have her hay, water, and grain out there to encourage her to use her outside toilet. She really doesn’t (sigh) but having her out of her stall more has helped her not churn everything.

I have another one was that an awful, awful, awful mess in a stall. But with a run–even if it’s just 12x12–means he poops OUTSIDE. He’s just the tidiest horse…as long as he can go in and out.

A lot of piggy horses can be improved, you just have to play around and see what sort of changes might help.

[Aussie_2020]

I like a clean stall but… I find I needed to back away from partially stripping it everyday. Looking at your dirty stall pic, not I would take the apples and only the wettest parts of the pee areas. The 2nd pic is about what I would take now. I’d just scrape that dark pee spot and leave the rest.

The cost of shavings or pellets can get crazy and the availability can get sketchy.

[LCDR]

I too have the ubiquitous pair of a fastidious mare and a pigpen gelding. I partly solved the pigpen problem with 24/7 turnout for both of them. But the gelding still insisted on coming back into his open access stall to pee instead of using the outdoor facilities. Taking up all the shavings solved that.

Being just a wee bit obsessive I was spending way too much time on stall cleaning. Is more turnout, up to 24/7 an option for them? And have you considered different bedding materials?

[Annie10]

I clean my stalls like that too. If its’ bigger than a fingernail it needs to come out, and all pee spots must be excavated and sprinkled with Sweet PDZ. 1) because I can’t stand a funky ass barn, 2) I really can’t stand to smell it, and 3) I don’t have flies in my barn and that’s why. I have two who are pretty neat and i add about a bag of shavings every 4 days or so. They only stay in about 8 hours a day. One I add a bag about every 3 days and the last one gets a bag every other day. It is what it is.

[SusanO]

Yes I had a borrowed horse like that. I like my stalls clean and no matter how many shavings were in his stall - it looked like brown mulch after a night(or day) in the stall. Pooped everywhere and churned it up into brown nasty bedding. More shavings equaled more brown mulch. So basically I had to strip it every day. In the summer you just can’t leave that mess if you want to not be a fly breeding area. No option for an in and out solution so he spent a lot of time in turnout.

And my pig mare that does have in and out - she seems to be unable to poop outside. So she has limited shavings so at least she will have to go outdoors to pee. Hers is easy to just shovel out. She is never going to be neat. More shavings equals more mess with her too.

My pony is neat so he can go with half a bag of shavings a day and he has a clean fluffy stall when he is in 12 hours a day.

[goodhors]

Have you tried just bedding in the center? Geldings seem able to only pee in a box stall center because that is “how they are made.” Mares can pee on any wall or in the center if they are piggy. Also you can “try” to retrain him to poop in a corner by putting some poop (preferably from another male horse) in your preferred corner, so he will often wish to poop on it.

We have moved water buckets, corner feeders and hay mangers to the front corner so horse can observe what is going on in the aisle or barn. They don’t have to grab a mouthful, go back to the window, then back to the food, then window, making a mess of the bedding as they circle the stall.

[clanter]

@Annie10

sprinkled with Sweet PDZ.

Standlee acquired Sweet PDZ in April, the bags are being redesigned

Sweet PDZ® Unveils New Look as It Joins the Standlee® Family of Brands

We used PDZ however had switched to Standlee Horse Fresh which was an identical product but was at least 25% less expensive. It appears that the Horse Fresh product is being discontinued, nothing has been said but surely the PDZ has the better name reconnection

[Demerara_Stables]

I worked at a barn as a teenager where the owner swore by raking the old shavings to one side (side by the door) and only adding shavings to the other side, by the feed bucket and where the hay was thrown. He said they’d eventually learn to poop on the dirty side and not the clean side. Some horses figured it out but not all of them. Worth a shot?

I know it’s hot where you are and your barn is new, but my only solutions to dirty stalls are 24/7 turnout (with stall access), an attached paddock, or bigger stalls.

[Zevida]

If the effort and the cost work for you, then I think that’s a great way to clean the stall. That’s how I do it when I have to clean my own horse’s stall if I’m away at a show or clinic without help.

[trubandloki]

OP, do not feel bad. You are not in this boat alone. Lots of horse people have this very same problem.

Horses like us to spend lots of money to make our manure piles bigger.

I have one horse who makes the dirty stall you show look clean and tidy. This horse seems to plot every night on the best way to use as much bedding as possible. In the morning, when I come out, I can see the gears churning as the last manure and pee spot are being picked, to make sure no spot is left free of waste.
My stalls are open to runs, so no manure or pee needs to be inside, but there it is, spread everywhere, trampled in, stirred up.
My horses also do not believe the theory that horses will not pee on hard surfaces and can be trained to pee/manure where we want them to. I sweep the bedding away from the aisle door but one horse will still pee right there, causing a pee lake (no bedding there) that flows out into the aisle.

I find your after photo perfect. That is how I clean too.
My messiest horse I just plan to strip the stall daily. Anything that I get to save is like a gift to my wallet.

My stalls are typically bedded with shavings over pellets. I put uncharged pellet bedding in the typical pee spots with shavings over the top.

Do try some of the ideas mentioned above (bedding deeper, trying to train them to go in one place, etc.), maybe you will be more lucky than I am.

[tabula_rashah]

I promise I’m not being snarky by saying this- but can you just turn him out more? 12 hours in a stall is a long time.

[Calvincrowe]

I’m picky too, but I use pelleted bedding. Makes piggy horse’s stalls easier to clean. I have learned to not be so anal about stalls over the years, but those churn and turn geldings are the worst! I agree that if you can, turn them out more.

I have a come and go set up: my horses have stall access at night, from their individual mud-free paddocks. When they are kept in (bad weather, ice) I bed more heavily but also don’t get frustrated when a bit of poo is left behind.

[Jo]

@tabula_rashah

I promise I’m not being snarky by saying this- but can you just turn him out more? 12 hours in a stall is a long time.

I may be mis-remembering but I believe the OP only has runs that she also regularly picks.

[tabula_rashah]

ah makes sense then

[Janet]

Have you considered using a deep litter system?

[Mcl1]

My guys live outside but I bed their run in shed, and my one horse seems to seek it out to pee in it. I have found that a layer of pellets under their regular shavings helps tremendously. The pee seems to go right through the upper layer and gets absorbed by the pellets, keeping the top layer clean. Plus they seem to help a ton with smell. With this method, I just pick out manure daily and strip the pee spots once a week *in nice weather, more frequently if they are in the shed more often.

[kaya842]

More time out (even if you are picking poo outside at least you aren’t also cleaning pee and paying for shavings).

Pellets (not fluffed or watered) in the regular pee spot.

More hay or “special hay” like an Alf mix to encourage them to stand vs churn (if body comp allows).

Keeping food and water on one side to encourage the meds to be in one spot.

Some horses are better with more windows, more views. Some are better with less otherwise they pace from view to view to watch. Maybe switching stall locations, opening (or closing) a window, covering a grill or removing boards between him and another horse, etc.

A fine tine fork cut down how much I was wasting of clean shavings caught with the dirty. This depends on the type of bedding you use (works best with sawdust but also works well for fine flakes, big flakes like at horse shows are no good with it).

I’ve found I always waste less with sawdust (powder really) vs a flake of any kind. The dust is more absorbent than the flakes and I don’t waste clean dust at all when picking poo.

[AllTheCarrots]

I like a basket-style fork for picking up manure and gently tossing it to shake out the clean-ish shavings. I am not coordinated enough to do this with a regular flat fork.

Barring that, I can lend you one of the geldings at my barn, who likes to poop in his corner feed tub.

[jvanrens]

If it makes you feel better, at the farm I managed the FOs had a mare that regularly pooped in her corner water bowl and in her feed box. We ended up putting a 2x6 across the corner so she couldn’t dump in the water bowl. The feed box, well, we cleaned it out regularly. Such a fun thing at 5 o’dark in the morning, but it wasn’t in a corner.