My mare would back up to my automatic waterer and let loose. Cleaning out the algae and bird poop was bad enough (the birds loved the heated water in the winter). She had three acres to poop on, but she only did it in the waterer or in the run in shed, preferably right against the wall.
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To me it does look like you’re taking out a fair amount of clean-ish shavings, based on what’s in the muck tub. Looking at the second photo, it looks like you’re picking the pee spots with a pitchfork? I like to use a broom around the edges of the pee spots to push the clean shavings away, then scoop only the truly wet bedding with a shovel. If it’s truly churned that’s not much help though. In that case I might try bedding deeper as someone else suggested, using pellets in the usual pee area so it doesn’t spread out as much, or bedding lighter if the horse doesn’t lie down inside anyway (less to churn).
Admittedly I am pretty frugal, don’t like adding excessive shavings to my compost pile, and cringe when I see people throwing away clean shavings because I hate waste. If you’re not dissatisfied with your system, that’s okay!
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I also use a basket style fork for stall cleaning to shake out clean bedding. I hate tossing out good bedding! I bed the center of my stalls (over mats) sweeping the floor back under buckets, hay area as well as the floor by the “back door” to the paddocks. This helps with my gelding. I bed a mare differently depending on where she pees.
I agree! Looks like lots of good (still usable) being taken away.
My method, for whatever it is worth me trying to explain it:
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Poop balls out first, along with pieces you can take out. Shake that fork to get all the clean shavings back into the stall
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Pee spot excavation - anything soaked needs to come out. Scrape away the clean(ish) edges, anything on top that is not soaked. Only wet out.
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All the scraped away mid-range (not dirty but not clean) shavings go back into the pee spot. That’s where they are going to pee, the shavings still have life left to help absorb the next load.
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Fluff, prettify, smooth - all the nice stuff from the edges gets redistributed to make the stall look nice. For mares, I like the back edge almost bare so they can pee/poo and it’s easier for me to pick up. For boys, they will pee in the middle so all the clean(ish) shavings go into the pee spot, the clean stuff around the outside for theoretical sleeping!
Hope that helps 
You really should only be taking out 1/2 of that muck tub of the gross wet dirty poo stuff, if you’re cleaning the stall once per day (and picking the poo from stall at night).
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Thank you so much for all the replies! I’m going to try a few different things based on them. I’m definitely not opposed to more pasture time—the only thing I need to figure out is that I feed them around 6 a.m., so they’re anxiously waiting by the gate at that time, and then I bring them into their stalls to eat. But I suppose I could feed them out in the pasture; I never really thought about doing that before.
I was thinking about leaving them out from 6 p.m. to 10 a.m. instead of 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., so that would be 16 hours instead of 12. I think anything later than 10 a.m. or earlier than 6 p.m. is just too hot in the Florida heat. The only problem with that is I ride my gelding at 8 a.m. before it gets too hot, so he’d really only be getting an extra couple of hours instead of four—but that’s still better.
I do wish I had run-ins for their stalls, but I keep all his hay tucked in the back corner between two windows, hoping that keeps him mostly in that one area throughout the day. I have his water buckets in the opposite corner, but it would be a little more difficult to get a hose over there if I were to move them.
Would it be better to clean the pee spots twice a day? I already pick the poop twice a day, but I’ve been hesitant to do the same with the pee because I felt like I was taking away too many shavings, giving him less cushion. I don’t know if that makes any sense or if I’m overthinking it—especially since if the pee spots are dirty, it’s not good for him to be standing on them anyway. But when I take out pee spots, I remove everything it touches in that area. Even if the top shavings look clean, I still take everything.
I think maybe that is too much? My dad sometimes helps me with the stalls, and he says I take out too much. He told me he removes half as much as I do. I usually fill a whole muck bucket with just pee from 12 hours. In my mind, I feel like I’m doing the right thing, because half of what I take out is wet and the other half is kind of a mix of wet and clean shavings—it’s a darker color, not as dark as a full wet spot, more like soiled.
It does feel good knowing it’s really clean for them, but I also think about how much time and shavings I might be wasting. It’s hard, because if I see any darker shavings, I feel like I have to take them out—and that ends up being half the stall. I know I need to find a happy middle ground where it’s not taking me twice as long to clean or using twice as many shavings, but still leaves their stalls clean and sanitary.
So, instead of scraping out the entire pee spot, is it okay to rake off the clean shavings on top and save them, even if a little bit is mixed in?
Tell us more please. What is deep litter system? I’m wondering because what I’ve gone to is deep and banked and I just pull the bedding away in the am to leave a much thinner base for the day. I’m not using more sawdust than the past. It give them a nice, deep bed to lay down at night and boy do they crash and I find them with sawdust in the morning.
I’d read about a study in Europe that horses sleeping on 6 inches of bedding had benefits. And that it’s good for them to get off their feet and onto a deep bed.
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After some MS attacks my horses’ outside areas got rather gross. One area had been a hoped for stall which never got roofed. The horses still liked standing there and it got rather deep with manure etc…
I had to get a barefoot trimmer out and she praised me for letting the horses have this filthy area that they loved to stand in. She said that she found that people got their stalls/turnout areas TOO CLEAN, so clean that their horses’ hooves started to dry out making it a lot harder for her to trim the hooves.
I had never been praised for something like this, super filthy footing for the horses.
Since I never really recovered from these MS attacks this area never got cleaned.
My horses and their hooves survived. Since I was so horribly weak these areas just went on getting deeper and deeper with muck. The saving grace for me was that it was not as hard for me to get their hooves trimmed down.
The horses did have drier areas to stand in, but they just preferred this one space in their paddock for standing around.
Her comments got me to reconsider the desirability of keeping my horses in CLEAN areas. I still felt guilty about this but my body would not cooperate with me.
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I’m not Janet but the basic idea is you pick the poo, and leave the rest completely alone, adding a thin clean bedding layer over the top each day. It builds up a thick layer of used bedding, and the heat from the decomposition of the lower layers warms horses in winter.
In spring you have an almighty task to clean it all out though…
Pros are less bedding used overall, less time spent on daily cleaning, less dust and spores in the air, and a deeper, softer, warmer, bed for the horse.
Cons are that removing the bed 2x a year is an almighty task, and the risk of ammonia buildup. Monitoring the wetness of the bed it important.
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You don’t clean it out! You don’t spend all that time building up a base to clean it out. We had a boarder who loved to help out by cleaning stalls wreak our deep bedded stalls. Made life a lot more work and more expensive.
Having difficulty posting a reply.
Basically you pick the manure, but not the pee, and keep adding clean bedding.
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Unfortunately, in a lot of stables, you’re gonna end up with a bed that is too deep so there’s a big step down to get out of the stall unless you clean it out every six months.
Yeah not removing urine daily would not work for me. Wow would that be a big job later. I pull back my bedding and remove it every.single.day. Thanks for all the replies and details.
